A team of 16 IBDP Year 2 students participated in the School Enterprise Challenge 2016.The competition is run by Teach A Man To Fish, is a global business start-up Awards Programme for schools around the world available for the most entrepreneurial schools, teachers and students. Students get the chance to gain hands-on experience of running a real business and generate real profits to help support their school or a social cause of their choice. This year more than 5000 Schools from over 100 Countries participated in this challenge. Our team has been chosen as the Winner in the Asia Pacific Region and has been awarded with a prize of $1000
Our team submitted a business idea of opening a business of manufacturing Handmade Crafts made of recycled paper and other recyclable waste materials. The profit making school business enterprise “Arte De Mano” is philanthropic and the profits stand pledged for economic support of rural women through a NGO. NGO Action Centre for Transformation (ACT), Gurgaon which supports rural women are the strategic partner. A detailed market research was conducted by the students to check the feasibility of the idea and they also did detail planning for Finance, Human Resources, Marketing and operations for their business. They carried a paper recycling drive `EkTukdaKaagazKa’ in School and residential areas to raise the finance for the new start up. A workshop was organized for the team members where the students learned the skills of making products from the waste that the women of the NGO had. Their product line consisted of Handmade Art products, Electronic Entertainment products and recycled paper and these products were sold through exhibitions in the Markets and School. Business launch, conducting market surveys, experimenting with products, building team consensus, product innovation, business ethics, maintaining financial records, marketing planning and managing human resources was a life time experience for the team.
Anshul Fanda ( Mentor)
