Tag Archives: YES

School student lands key governance role on YES – Sam Wixon

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A “transformational experience” has not only propelled former Havelock North High School student Sam Wixon into the business world but landed him a key governance role.

Having competed in The Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) for the past two years, the 18-year-old has been elected as the youth trustee for 2021–2022 on the Board of Young Enterprise Trust, which provides strategic direction and governance for the organisation.

“One of the biggest reasons that I applied for the youth trustee role was because I’ve had such a transformational experience with YES and I really want and hope that other people can have that same experience,” Sam says.

He hopes to have a positive impact on the bicultural side of Young Enterprise. “I want to make sure there is a strong voice for the students and a good understanding of what the students are after and what it is like going through the

programme currently.”

During his final two years of high school (2019–2020), Sam’s business Te Kete ō Tangaroa developed an alternative to polystyrene bins, drawing inspiration from the mātauranga of his tūpuna to do so.

Passionate about business, design and te ao Māori, Sam was inspired to take polystyrene out of circulation, offering an alternative with his own bins made

from a biodegradable material that could also be industrially composted.

Te Kete ō Tangaroa received three National Excellence awards, the He Kai Kei Aku Ringa Award for Rangatahi Entrepreneurs two years in a row, and the HSBC Award for Environmental Sustainability in 2020.

It was also one of the five YES businesses selected for the Global Kaitiakitanga Project in collaboration with New Zealand at Expo 2020. In 2019, Sam was in the Uprise digital team at Entrepreneurs in Action (EIA), which took out both business challenges.

Sam says he “never would have thought” he would be able to achieve what he has, but YES pushed him and showed him his potential. “It made me a lot more open to taking and grasping at every opportunity, pushing myself and being resilient, and

I think that’s really transformational for myself and most people.”

As well as his trustee position, Sam has recently begun a Bachelor of Design Innovation majoring in Design for Social Innovation and minoring in Public Policy at Victoria University of Wellington.

His experience with YES has meant he now has a “really good tool belt of abilities and understandings that are more than what we just get out of the stock standard school experience”.

As for his business, he is unsure what the future holds.

“I have been in contact with different organisations and groups about it and the overall conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s going to take a really large amount of money to be able to get

it to a point where it will be market-ready, which is something I can’t do by myself.”

Sam’s success is the latest in a long list of trailblazing Rangatahi from Hawke’s Bay who have achieved national success through YES. Most notably, former Karamu High School student Jeriel Sajan, who was the first to hold the youth trustee position for 2019–2020.

The end of Jeriel’s term has seen her take up the newly created position of Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne regional coordinator – a role she is looking forward to diving into headfirst.

A YES alumna who participated in both 2015 and 2016, Jeriel developed a passion for both business and the work of Young Enterprise and is excited to now be a regional coordinator.

Jeriel has continued her keen interest in business and is currently completing a Bachelor in Business Studies at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT).

“When the opportunity to be the national youth trustee came up, I thought I would love to give back to the organisation; and then actually being involved at these different levels, I just fell in love with it, so this is like my dream job,” Jeriel says.

She not only hopes to increase participation for the region – already at 450 students – but also see students place at nationals as well as win a sponsored award.

“We certainly give the rest of New Zealand a good run for their money and we would love to show that we are actually leaders in this area, so I’m going to be pushing for that in the coming year.”

Despite the disruptions faced because of Covid-19, more than 4,000 senior secondary students took part in YES last year, setting up over 1,000 companies between them. Only 21 of those companies made it to the national final, including Te Kete ō Tangaroa.

Hawke’s Bay also won three sponsored awards – the same amount as Wellington and just one less than Auckland, who has almost three times the number of students participating.

Jeriel believes Hawke’s Bay’s success is down to people seeing the value that YES has on a young person’s life.

“I think people get onboard with the momentum and they can see how a young person becomes more confident and more resilient after they’ve had a chance to give this a go, and the more the region gets on board the more our Rangatahi can really thrive.”

As part of the programme, Jeriel is looking for people to consider being a mentor for a team. “These young people would really benefit from having an older person who is more experienced in business or other sectors.”

If you want to find out how you can be a part of YES here in Hawke’s Bay, contact Jeriel on jeriel@hbchamber.nz

Hawke’s Bay Breeding Brilliant Youth in Business

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A team from Woodford House has won this year’s Young Enterprise Scheme for their product – an environmentally friendly fruit label.

Sarah Wixon, Rylie Bensemann, Zoe Rookes and Maggie Peacock featured in the previous issue of The Profit and took out the top award for their water soluable sticker that aims to reduce waste and encourage consumers to wash their fruit.

65 Hawke’s Bay YES (Young Enterprise Scheme) teams started up a business this year with each team coming up with an idea of a product or service and then undertaking market research to see if their great idea would sell and then took it to market.

The teams came from 15 Hawke’s Bay secondary schools and were either year 12 or 13 (6th & 7th form). Over the course of eight months students completed three YES challenges which determined the top six teams in the region. These top six teams competed in the YES finals on 24 October at EIT.

The top six Hawke’s Bay teams were;

  • Empressa Central Central Hawke’s Bay College
  • MyTapp Woodford House
  • Poncho Me Iona
  • Project Rangatahi EIT Business Enterprise Unit
  • Bayuble Woodford House
  • Lightning Lock Hastings Christian School

The competition was fierce, and the judge’s decision was a tough one as the team results were so close.  “We didn’t know who the Hawke’s Bay Champion was until the last moment as the judges were torn and therefore had many discussions before a winner was chosen” says Karla Lee, Hawke’s Bay YES Regional Coordinator.  However, there could be only one winner and the team who took the overall title was Bayuble from Woodford House.

Bayuble have created an alternative label to stickers for fruit.  The team impressed the judges with their strong presentation, innovative product and commitment to research.  Bayuble will now be offered the opportunity to pitch at the Pan Pac Hawke’s Bay Business Awards on Friday 16th November to fine tune their delivery before heading to Wellington to represent Hawke’s Bay on Thursday 6th December where they will compete against 20 other New Zealand regions.

Hawke’s Bay also have two teams that won National Excellence Awards.  The teams were not told which award they have won but they are both invited to Wellington in December to accept their respective award.  These teams are;

  • George St Johns College
  • Letz Lead Hawke’s Bay Prison

The finals and awards are a celebration for YES teams “the awards evening highlights the brilliant work of our youth in Hawke’s Bay and what the future holds.  It takes courage and hard work to achieve the results these teams have accomplished and I couldn’t be more proud of these amazing young entrepreneurs” says Karla Lee.

If you were unable to see the evening in person, you have the opportunity to see it on the Hawke’s Bay Chamber of Commerce facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/hawkesbaychamber/

You can also see Bayuble pitch at the Pan Pac Hawke’s Bay Business Awards that are open to the public.  For tickets please go to https://www.hawkesbaychamber.co.nz/

How YES crosses the business boundaries

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Today’s high school students face a world where technological change makes it much harder to plot out a career path. That’s one reason Woodford House has embraced the Young Enterprise Scheme.

Woodford House is one of 15 schools across Hawke’s Bay participating in the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) this year and has five teams competing in the challenge.

Woodford’s head of business studies and director of innovation Toni Dunstan views the scheme as an exciting initiative and a vital component in the school’s mission to prepare its students for an evolving career environment.

This year Woodford House introduced a Level 3 (Year 13) business studies course – incorporating YES – into its curriculum. The course is aimed at providing students with experiential learning in a business context and Toni says she has been delighted by the positive elements YES is delivering.

“What I love about this course is the experiential learning and the interdisciplinary nature. It’s not just the silo of business studies,” she says.

“Take Bayuble for example [one of the Woodford YES teams profiled below]. They have spent just as much time in the science lab and in the food tech room developing their product and are going to enter it into the local science fair.

“That crossover of business and science is really exciting because in my personal view, that’s an example of the future of education – we have to break down silos and understand that learning is about crossing boundaries.

“The Young Enterprise Programme is a wonderful vehicle for business education because with elements such as its competitive nature, the deadlines and the outside audience, it puts a real-world scaffolding around what the girls are learning. It’s not just me setting an arbitrary date for an assignment, there are people outside the school who they are accountable to. I also love the interaction with their mentors, which brings the community into what we’re doing.”

MYTAPP: linking students and tutors

For their YES business, Sophie Svenson, Monique Way, Bridget de Latour and Francesca Arlidge are developing a web-based application designed to connect students with freelance tutors.

Users will sign up either as a tutor or a student, and they will then be connected with people in their local community to arrange tutoring sessions through the platform.

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The group got off to an excellent start in developing their business by successfully securing seed funding from EIT and Waikato University. They say they have benefited greatly by working closely with their mentor, Georgina Miller, the co-founder of local digital agency Mogul.

One of the lessons learnt in the early months of the project, they say, has been the importance of ensuring the service meets the needs of its target market. To do that, the group interviewed a range of people including parents, students and tutors to find how they thought current tutoring options could be improved to offer a better service.

“The message we got from that was that while a lot of web-based services only offer online tutoring – because it’s easy and accessible – students really want face-to-face tutoring, so that’s what we’re focusing on.”

They say their target market of high school students is likely to be exposed to the service through social media, so that will be a major focus for the project.

“Marketing, particularly through social media, will play a big part in drawing users to the platform.”

Bayuble: a better way to label fruit

Sarah Wixon, Rylie Bensemann, Zoe Rookes and Maggie Peacock have been hard at work in the lab working on the development of a water soluble, environmentally friendly fruit sticker that will reduce waste and encourage consumers to wash their fruit.

They hope their plastic-free, biodegradable sticker idea will revolutionise how fruit is labelled.

The make-up of their sticker material is a trade secret but it involves using a by- product of apples, and the concept was good enough to win seed funding from Waikato University.

“Europe has recently introduced a target to be rid of unnecessary plastic, and we see the fruit sticker as being in that category.”

The team’s mentor is Dean Prebble, a former New Zealand trade commissioner in Taiwan who recently set up the Hawke’s Bay Angels investment group. The students say Dean’s input and feedback has been priceless and he has provided them with valuable contacts as they have researched their project.

“We’ve built up a lot of connections in the industry through our research, which has included discovering there have been alternatives to fruit stickers, including a fruit tattoo (done through lasering). We looked into that and discovered that lasering the fruit can leave it blemished, which detracts from its visual appeal. In many markets, they want the ‘perfect apple’ and our stickers would allow the fruit to remain in top condition, whereas the current stickers can leave a bit of a sticky residue that can detract from the look of the fruit.”