College students make their mark

24 November 2009

Kendal College hosted a “Make your Mark Challenge” last week, as part of the UK’s largest one-day enterprise competition for secondary schools and colleges. The event saw students from all four colleges in Cumbria come together to participate in the all-day event, which finished with a ‘Dragons Den’ style finale in front of local business leaders.

College students present their ideas to the dragons

Students from Carlisle, Furness, Kendal and Lakes Colleges worked as teams during the day, with each team comprising a representative from each college to encourage collaborative team work.

In the first activity of the day teams were given 15 minutes to transform one of their team members into a famous icon, place or landmark; using only newspaper and sellotape.

The second challenge was to come up with a new and innovative idea that took its inspiration from “something local”. The idea could have been a product or a service, but it had to be a “cool creation”, meaning that it had to be a profitable business idea that minimised its impact on the environment.

Students had to think about the carbon footprint of their proposed business idea, consider how products or services are produced and transported, whether they could be reused and/or recycled in their business and how they could reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that their business produced.

The judges for the “Make Your Mark Challenge” were Christian Hoyle, Owner and Manager of Eden Hair & Beauty Salon, Kendal; Rohan Pike - Production Co-ordinator of Russ Andrews Accessories Kendal; and Mike Parkin, Leadership Consultant

The winning team created a new product called Spike or Life, designed to promote safer drinking. Recognising the risks of young people having their drinks spiked in pubs and clubs, they created a range of accessories, bracelets, belts and key rings, to which a small tube of iodine solution could be attached. When placed in a drink, this small, 5ml tube would indicate whether a drink has been adulterated.

Students also worked on the finance for the product, their target market, how they would promote it in the industry and communicate its benefits.

Students in the winning team were: Chris Edgar, IT student from Lakes College; Mark Hodgson, Business student from Lakes College; Amy Boon, Health & Social Care from Furness College; Victoria Liu; sports student from Carlisle College; Claire Vick and Simone Footitt, childcare students from Kendal College and Melissa Redhead, Health & Social Care student from Kendal College.