STUDENTS LEARNING REAL-WORLD SKILLS – Enterprise in the Community is a school based competition that pairs real world businesses working together with a group of 5-6 students to solve a problem as identified by the business to help their needs. The program has been developed to give students the experience working with unique issues that businesses face. On top of this, the program allows students to collaborate with peers and build presentation skills. During the program students identify the core problem for the business, offer and justify solutions as well as present how they can assist the business beyond their suggestions.
St Paul’s piloted the program in 2019 when founders of SEVENmile Greg Twemlow and Mitchell Filby reached out to St Pauls as they believed the school would be a perfect fit for such a unique program. St Paul’s has continued to be a part of the program since then, seeing it grow to 6 schools from around Sydney in 2022.
This year, St Paul’s had the youngest team entered into the finals out of the six schools, with 4 students from year 9 and 2 from year 10 competing against students from other schools who were in year 11. The team represented “Internet Innovations” – a business that focuses on improving the wireless telecommunications of remote and rural farms. Joe Prelc, the owner of Internet Innovations asked the students to help him analyse how he could implement new features into the business, including who he should pitch the business to and even the name of what new feature should be called. The Internet Innovations team presented at a level well beyond their years, seeing them place a well deserved 3rd. The presentation and ideas from the team were so impressive that Joe registered the website domain from the student’s name and slogan pitch.
