The Impact Sessions 43 - From Lightbulb to Life Skills - A Young Enterprise Journey

Wow, we hope that this Impact Sessions Podcast Episode Will Blow You Away..... It certainly did us!

Former Podcast Guest, Paul Lillywhite contacted me and said he was working with an inspirational team who he felt would be great guests for the Podcast and a real value add to the Podcast library - How could I resist?

That they turned out to be a team of 6 x Lower 6th / Year 11 Students from St. Peter's School in York was the real surprise, but not once we had met and interviewed them.

It has been an absolute pleasure to see such passion, energy and focus of the team, a team who are a great credit to themselves, the school and their business - YES, THEIR BUSINESS!

The team are competing in a national Young Enterprise Competition, setting up and running a business over the course of 3 terms, with all of the required rigour, focus and structure you have to demonstrate as you would if you have to manage and run a business with in the "real world".

They chose a Social Enterprise Structure for the business, appointed a Board of Directors including Joint Managing Directors, a Sales Director, a Marketing Director, and a couple of Social Media stars, all supported by a cast of over 20 Students all playing other key roles.

It has been some journey - So what is the business?

During lockdown 1 in March 2020, one of the Students, Lucy had an idea for a simple cookbook to help her elderly Gran / Nan who had previously been diagnosed with Alzheimer's but wanted to still enjoy cooking with her husband and her Carer, (and hopefully Lucy after lockdown was lifted).

It was not an idea for a business at that stage, just something great she could do for her cherished Gran / Nan.

From that simple idea, "Caring Through Cooking - Bringing Generations Together" was born as THE idea that St. Peter's wanted to adopt as their business entry in the Young Enterprise Competition come September 2020.  From then to March 2021, the journey has been one of creativity, collaboration, communication and of course hard work.

It has been about researching, launching & published an excellent cookbook "Caring Through Cooking - Bringing Generations Together". Developing their sales & marketing strategies including an Instagram presence, a website and even a QR code backed series of cookery demonstrations to support the book and conducting market research and collaboration projects with the Alzheimer's Research UK to validate their products from a safety and accessibility perspective.

All whilst working and studying remotely for the vast majority of the time!

Watch or listen to this episode to see how the students have managed all of this and have a product range on the launchpad of success.

If you have experienced a relative with Alzheimer's or if you just want to help these excellent students to make a difference, their contact details, including where to buy the book or access their product range are included here.

A truly inspiring episode of The Impact Sessions Podcast, we hope that you will agree.

Contact Details

St. Peter's School Young Enterprise Team - Caring Through Cooking - Bringing Generations Together

Lead Teacher - Mr Dominic Shread

Email - d.shread@stpetersyork.org.uk

Website for Books - https://www.ye-tradingstation.org.uk/product/bringing-generations-together-cookbook?v=282 

Instagram - caringthroughcooking