Are you looking to inspire your students with an exciting project that sets them up for success? One that can lead to business and industry mentorship and that recognises and rewards efforts to make our world a better place?
The Young Business Mind Awards is open again this year and has partnered with the Hunter Innovation Festival to create opportunity and resources that encourage our young people to look to the future with positivity, to foster a sense of entrepreneurship and an awareness of the skills necessary for success in the world.
The YBMA has been providing a showcase opportunity for children and young people under the age of 25 to develop entrepreneurial projects since 2017. Young people are encouraged to enter a business idea, design a new product or showcase a creative project for a chance to win cash prizes, school recognition, industry mentorship and participation in this year’s Hunter Innovation Festival.
Primary students are encouraged to take on a class project exploring ideas around Sustainability.
Secondary students and under 25s can work as individuals or in groups across the categories of Sustainability, Social or Business Enterprise, Creative Industries or Design and Technology. It’s about taking a step closer to a future where their ideas can make a difference.
HOW IT WORKS
Step 1: Decide that you’re going to pursue this as a great project for your students (or yourself – there are teacher awards too) and register here. If you register before 31 May, you could win one of 10 $30 cash gift cards. Registration is only so that we have an idea of who is working towards their entry and how many participants we are likely to have and is not a barrier to entry.
Step 2: Familiarise yourself with the resources available online here. And the entry requirements (Secondary; Primary; Teacher).
Step 3: Talk to your students about the awards and start researching your big ideas, determining what category each student/group is entering as you go (Sustainability for Primary students; Sustainability, Business, Social Enterprise, Creative Industries, Design & Technology for Secondary students).
Hints: The awards are called the Young Business Mind Awards – the idea is to showcase an innovative new idea/business/product within your chosen category. Many existing school projects will fit the bill without much extra work entailed. How can you take your idea and create a business or product from it? What problems can you solve? Use the resources available online.
INVITATION – this is the point at which we invite you to reach out and request a visit from one of our team. We are happy to come along and present to your students for 30 minutes or so, explaining the awards and inspiring big ideas. Please reply to this email before June 7 if this is something you would like to take advantage of – we are offering this to 15 schools only.
Step 4: Award applicants should prepare a simple pitch deck explaining their project and produce a short 2 minute video to submit by Sept 3. The resource page on our website contains a pitch deck template, an idea builder for primary students, curriculum links for teachers, and a digital magazine for teens that contains useful content.
Step 5: Attend the awards ceremony, tentatively scheduled for Sept 24 to find out if you’ve won or been a runner up! Enjoy your prizes – we can arrange mentorship by appropriate businesses or industry leaders, incursions, excursions, attendance and participation in the Hunter Innovation Festival, there’s cash, trophies and certificates.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out and talk to us (email us at ybma@careerlinks.nsw.edu.au. Put your hand up for a visit. We want to make this as easy and rewarding for you as we can. We really believe that events like these help to foster the skills and networks our young people are going to need to be successful in the future and we’d love your students to be a part of it this year. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
