Take a group of eight young people who would rather be somewhere else, a ten week pilot scheme, an enterprise qualification, an enthusiastic teacher with little business knowledge but a passion for cooking and an external organisation delivering four enterprise awareness workshops and what do you get………
‘The Seasonal Cupcake Company’
In late October 2009 many would have believed the challenge facing Judy Dixon and Liz Cripps of Future Pathways, East Parade, Leeds would have been impossible; a pilot scheme to deliver an Enterprise Qualification which included the young people forming a company and selling a product once they had pitched for a ‘start-up’ budget from the Future Pathways directors all within a ten week period leading up to Christmas.
However everyone involved showed just how it could be done and not only were the aims and objectives achieved expectations were exceeded, the group underwent a transformation and a profit was made; most start up businesses would be grateful for businesses this in ten months not ten weeks.
MyB!z facilitator Tina Boden delivered four inspirational and motivational workshops as part of the Sharing the Success programme which helped the group of young people, who lost a couple of members along the way, to understand their own skills and abilities and how they fit within the business idea, the importance of a good product or service to sell, a business name that people liked and finding out who their customers and competitors were before they went out in to the marketplace.
‘One of the young ladies in the group made a statement to me in the early stages of the pilot that young people weren’t understood; people think we are all trouble and we are all branded the same’ says Tina Boden of Winning Moves. ‘ This group really showed how this was not the case; I have never seen such a change in personalities in a short space of time, learning to work as a team and understand how this makes a difference.
Incorporating social skills and key skills into the pilot scheme was part of the remit and the group skills came to appreciate how this was not just maths and reading; developing spreadsheets, marketing materials, questionnaires and analysing data was seen as interesting not mundane. These young people also learnt the importance of networking and how to deliver presentations to other external agencies.
This pilot certainly did increase enterprise awareness, develop personal abilities and gave an opportunity for the group to show exactly what they were capable of whilst producing some very tasty and calorie filled cupcakes.
