Made in Sandwell schools challenge

Date added: 22 April 2009

In March, finditinsandwell teamed up with Sammy Rose Management Services to organise a special ‘Made in Sandwell’ schools challenge for students from the Q3 Academy in Great Barr.

When we held our highly successful Made in Sandwell event on Thursday 5 March, not only did we want to showcase Sandwell’s manufacturing businesses, but nurture entrepreneurship in the borough’s young people too. Having uncovered some of the next business stars of Sandwell at our Enterprise and Entrepreneur event in November, we decided to devise a second schools challenge to help even more students learn about the business world.

Working alongside Rowley Regis marketing firm Sammy Rose Management Services, we invited Year 9 students from the Q3 Academy in Great Barr to attend Made in Sandwell. They had already been issued with a set of instructions to follow on the day.

The students were to act as business consultants to a fictional firm called Days Gone By Furnishings – a highly skilled, specialist furniture manufacturer which needed to begin batch-producing its chairs in order to supply to period hotel groups such as Macdonalds and Barceló.

The two sets of ‘consultants’ – who called themselves Outlook and Insight – were to use Made in Sandwell as an opportunity to talk to real manufacturing firms and find out about diversification and market research.
Then on Thursday 19 March, Outlook and Insight were invited to Sandwell Council House to present their pitch to a panel of judges, consisting of Peter Coley and Jean Knight from the Sandwell Education Business Partnership (EBP), Steve Massey and Julie Dixon from the finditinsandwell team, and Sandwell architect Paul Overton.

Sammy Rose was there to liaise with the judges and support the two teams, consisting of Matt Smalling, Arun Cheema, Rajan Bangar, Jatinder Mahli and Elliott Tyndale (Insight) and Nikita Jnagal, Kalindi Parikh, Molly Glave, Georgette Roach and Phillipa Mass (Outlook).

Both teams were praised for their creativity – and their bravery in presenting under nerve-wracking conditions! In the end, Insight was chosen as the winning team, for their level of depth in analysing the market conditions. Each member was presented with his own mini camcorder.

Peter Coley of EBP said the challenge had been useful not just for encouraging entrepreneurship, but in giving the students a unique insight into the business world. “This fits in with the employability skills the students will be looking to gain in the next few years – learning to do presentations, talking to a group of people … “ he said. “It’s great that finditinsandwell is taking an interest in Sandwell students as well as businesses, because you’re helping to shape the business people of the future.”

Is your school interested in taking part in a finditinsandwell challenge? Please contact Steve Massey at Sandwell Council on 0121 569 2105.

[Pictured: the winning team!]