Comment

The X-events winning team (left to right): Liam Smith, Ian Black (co-sponsor Monahans), Rob Rendell, Gemma Smith, Louis Paget, and Matthew Lloyd.

Young Enterprise company X-Events from The George Ward School emerged as worthy overall winners of the Wiltshire County Young Enterprise Final, held at co-sponsor BP Castrol's HQ in Swindon, on Thursday.

They also won the award for Enterprise and Innovation.

The Melksham-based company devised, marketed and ran a series of high profile, successful school and public events to beat off strong competition from Dauntsey's School and St Augustine's Catholic College.

They also donated a large proportion of their profits to charity.

A total of six company teams from schools across the county went head to head to convince the judges why they should be chosen as the overall winner.

Sprint from Dauntsey's School, West Lavington, scooped three awards for best Company Report, best Financial performance, and the BP Castrol cup for best Presentation, whilst Wrap Attack from St Augustine's, Trowbridge, won the award for best Trade Stand.

Before a panel of judges and a large audience the students were subjected to a close scrutiny of their company reports, interviewed as a team on their trade display stand and finally they presented to the whole audience about what they had done, what they had learnt and the problems that they had overcome to become successful young entrepreneurs.

Deputy Manager for the winning X-Events company, Gemma Smith, confessed: "At the start we really didn't think we would get this far. This result has inspired us to go flat out to win the South West Regional Final in June."

"We are now actively considering continuing our business outside of school."

Nigel White, chairman of the Wiltshire Central area youth enterprise scheme and head of the HSBC Commercial Centre in Trowbridge, said: "The standard of presentations continues to improve year after year. In fact a number of judges said after the presentations that they would love to have them working at their company which is praise indeed."

YE development manager Andrew Martin said: "The youngsters have been brilliant. The standard is very high.''

9:56am Friday 16th May 2008

Print

Email this

Comment