Award winning students present green ideas to MSP
1 October, 2008
Robin Harper MSP with the students from Hawick High School, standing outside of the Scottish Parliament building.
Thirteen lucky students from Hawick High School, Scotland this week received a tour of Scottish Parliament and presented a green business plan for recycling electronic equipment to Robin Harper MSP.
The invite to Parliament came after the students won their high schools social enterprise day event hosted by ShP for Enterprise — a leading provider of social enterprise days — to develop a business plan for the safe disposal of electronic equipment in accordance to the compulsory European WEEE Directive introduced in 2007.
Enterprise days are an engaging method to introduce children to business activity and entrepreneurism. According to recent research, children taking part in Enterprise days are likely to earn a 3rd more than peers and prosper later in life.
The thirteen students completed a series of activities throughout the course of enterprise day to develop a business plan including finance resourcing and marketing strategy for their green recycling idea. The day then came to a climax where the group of students survived a Dragon’s Den-style drilling from a board of professional actors posing as business entrepreneurs during a presentation of their business plan.
The lucky group of 13 were selected as the winners of the school enterprise day after the panel of actors agreed that their business proposal was the most thorough and well presented idea with the aim of increasing recovery and recycling rates.
“It was a brilliant day for our new S6 students. It was the perfect team-building induction that we wanted and it appears that the S6 students had a great experience and were buzzing from the day. They learned so much in a short time and were so keen and creative when it came to the presentations. The pitch of the day and the presenters were fab.”
— Susan Duffy, Deputy Headteacher at Hawick High School
What separates ShP for Enterprise from similar programmes is its ability to integrate business knowledge of the recycling industry from parent company ShP Limited into its schedules. Activities are carefully designed to cover key stages of the curriculum whilst delivering simple and effective messages around recycling and sustainability – an area high on many people’s agendas this current day. ShP’s work in Borders Schools has been supported by the Scottish Government’s Determined to Succeed initiative.
“every time I meet young people across Scotland I'm always impressed with their determination and their passion to protect the environment. This particular group has been through a lot of tough tests to get here, including an eco-Dragon's Den…Who knows, perhaps one or two of them might one day become leading environmentalists in the business world.”
— Green MSP Robin Harper
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