A team of enterprising students has made it through to the semi-finals and been declared the ‘Most Improved’ in the Enactus UK Competition.
This international competition works with leading corporate partners and universities to encourage students to apply business concepts to develop community outreach projects that improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need.
This year, as well as being noted for being the Most Improved Team, the Bath students came home with the runners’ up prize in the semi-finals of the UK competition for their four projects.
“It has been an incredible year and we’ve made some amazing impact and been successful at the national competition where they recognised our efforts. This is all down to the four projects where we worked with a variety of people including a struggling shop owner and young people with no qualifications,” said team leader Simon Lum, a second year Accounting and Finance student.
The four projects presented by the Bath students were:
- The Ugandan Threads Co which helps to empower women in the African country to produce and sell ethical products locally and internationally
- Insight Consulting which helped the project manager of the Bath Community Shop with business skills training
- Bright Ways which provided an eight-week programme at Bath City College for young people without qualifications to boost confidence and give them the skills to apply for further education places or jobs
- ReSTARt which delivered business workshops to socially excluded adults to help boost their entrepreneurial skills so that they can set up their own businesses
Students’ Union Enterprise Manager Siobain Hone said: “The teams work on their enterprising projects all year round – creating economic opportunity for those in need and have to measure the social, economic and environment impact of their work.”
“The competition is an excellent way of increasing the students’ employability skills and most of the UK’s top graduate recruiters are involved as judges and sponsors. Teams are encouraged to bring their CVs and there are several networking events and a careers fair where students are directly recruited for jobs and placements.”
The overall winner of the UK competition was Southampton, whose team will represent the UK at the World Championships in September 2013 in Cancun, Mexico.
The Bath students who took part were Georgie Kirby (2nd year BSc Business Administration), Emily Sara (2nd year BSc Politics with International Relations), Sorrella Smith (2nd year MEng Civil Engineering), Jasmine Onabanjo (2nd year BSc Accounting and Finance), Sarah McLaren (4th year BSc Economics), Raymond Chooi (2nd year BSc Computer Science) and Simon Lum (2nd year, BSc Accounting and Finance).
The team were boosted by comments by judges, like Ashley Hever, European Talent Acquisition Manager at Enterprise Rent-A-Car who said theirs was ‘the best presentation of all the teams’ and are setting their sights on higher places in next year’s competition.
The team have also put together a YouTube video on their entry which can be viewed here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leVg8km6RZM&feature=player_embedded