A young team of young aspiring entrepreneurs from Coventry have won the West Midlands Regional Final of our 2018 Mosaic Enterprise Challenge competition.
Having beaten others within their region and teams from Eden Boys School, Harborne Academy, Jewellery Quarter Academy and Kings Heath Boys, The ‘New Age Coventry Curling Club’ beat off the competition with their idea for an accessible new Curling Club for their school and local community. All finalists taking part had worked had to beat off 126 student teams from other schools across their region to reach the finals.
Generously hosted at Shoosmiths, Birmingham, all the finalist teams pitched their social enterprise ideas to a panel of highly acclaimed judges from a variety of sectors, including, Kathy Murphy – Chair of Judges and Partner at Shoosmiths, Sarah Khan-Bashir MBE – Mosaic Yorkshire RLG, Ifraz Ahmed – Editor-in-Chief at The Asian Today and Shakil Butt – Entrepreneur and Rob Bhol – Managing Director of Nicholls Brimble Solicitors.
The ‘New Age Coventry Curling Club’ will now enter the final stage of the competition and progress to the Enterprise Challenge Grand Finals, taking place in London on the 16th May. Here they will compete against all other winning schools from respective regions including the North West, West Midlands, Yorkshire, Glasgow and London for the chance to become the national champions of 2018!
The overall winning team will win a prize of £2,500 for their school plus a further £500 to invest in developing their business idea and making it a commercial reality. Previous winners have also enjoyed tea at 10 Downing Street and a unique tour of Clarence House.
When asked about how they felt about winning and going on to represent the West Midlands at the national finals, the students from Grace Academy, Coventry were confident: “If we can win here we can do it again at the Grand Finals! It’s been a great experience today and one which we’d all definitely do all over again if we had to.”
Keynote speaker on the day and Mosaic Chairman was Shabir Randeree CBE. He was proud of the students, saying: “Not only is the competition getting stronger every year, the ideas the students pitch are getting more innovative.”
Chairing the judging panel for the first time, Kathy Murphy, a Partner at Shoosmiths said: “Congratulations to all the teams. It’s been a great competition and a great day for everybody involved!”
Run annually, Mosaic’s Enterprise Challenge is a national competition that aims to inspire knowledge, raise aspirations, confidence, self-efficacy and long-term employability among secondary school pupils from some of the most deprived communities across the UK. Supported by specialist, volunteer mentors from across the business community, students compete for six-weeks in an online business game where they must develop, market and sell a new product.
