At the end of the school year, groups of Year 11 volunteers took part in a social enterprise programme run by Entrepreneurs in Action with UOcean and Otto’s.
My group was tasked with helping UOcean, a charity focused on organising litter collections to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in our oceans. The challenge was to scale up their company and make litter picking a more desirable task among our generation. We split into different sections including market research, innovation, finance, marketing, and production/design to simulate a real business and I was voted CEO.
The different groups worked together, guided by our mentor from Entrepreneurs in Action, to create three ideas that became the foundations of our recommended roadmap for the company: a social media challenge, an app, and partnerships. On the last day, these ideas were presented to UOcean’s CEO and the Head of PR and Marketing, as well as teachers and other students.
During this process, I learned lots about what it’s like to work in a business and create a company strategy and had the chance to work with peers who are not in my classes. We hope to work with UOcean in the future, developing these ideas and contributing to their aim to collect one billion kilos of waste.
Emilia Wood, Year 11
