Throughout Autumn 2014, Five Lamps delivered a MyBnk Business Battle session at Beverley School Middlesbrough, which is a specialist school for children and young people with autism
The Business Battle is a six session challenge, to give young people the opportunity to become entrepreneurs and sell their service or product(s). The sessions were delivered by Jenny Donaldson, Five Lamps’ MyBnk Project Manager and included; generating ideas, product design, budget and costs, logistics and production, price and marketing, selling and reflection.
The seventeen enterprise students from Beverley School aged 16-17 split into four groups to create their products. Group 1 worked with food and made biscuits, muffins, cakes and hot drinks. Group 2 worked with wood and made hand-made decorations and plaques. Group 3 worked with textiles and made cushion covers, felt baubles and wreaths. Group 4 worked with environmental finds, they made wreaths from locally sourced materials.
A Christmas Market day was held at Five Lamps South Thornaby Community Centre and gave the young people an opportunity to put the skills and knowledge they had learnt over the six sessions in to practice and to sell their high quality products.
The Market day was a success and was visited by people from Stockton, Middlesbrough and Thornaby. All of the customers left positive feedback on the young people’s enthusiasm and hard work which was put in to the Christmas Market.
The students made over £200 profit and their remaining stock will be sold at their Christmas shows.
Georgina Smith, a customer who travelled from Stockton for the event said:
“It was a lovely Christmas Market – You can tell the young people have worked hard on their items. I treated myself to some lovely decorations and had tea and cakes in the cafe. I thought the customer service was excellent and I would love to see something like this happen more often, it was really nice and has got me into the Christmas spirit”
Trevor Tiit, Beverley School’s Head of Sixth Form added
“Our involvement in Business Battle engaged students in a valuable, real life entrepreneurial challenge. They enjoyed working with Jenny Donaldson, from the Five Lamps Organisation, whom we would like to thank for the support she has given to Beverley School. All the students worked extremely hard to produce high quality products for sale and did a great job in running the café and stalls in the centre for the day. I’d also like to thank everyone who came to support us during the event”