Student Enterprise Programme 2022/2023
Students from Fingal have won the Best Commercial Potential prize in Junior Category at this year’s Student Enterprise Programme National Finals. The Finals of the Local Enterprise Office initiative took place on Friday May 5th in Croke Park. Over 1,200 students from 27 Fingal Schools took part in this year’s programme.
Supported by Local Enterprise Office Fingal, The students won Best Commercial Potential in the Junior Category. The winning students were: are James Harcourt, Adam Li, Oran O’Neil from Castleknock College who worked under the guidance of their teacher, Ciaran Cullen. Their student enterprise is called Dr Ink which designs and produces custom phone cases.
In the Junior Category, the student representing Fingal at the National Finals were James Harcourt, Adam Li, Oran O’Neil from Castleknock College. In the Intermediate Category, Shane Cunningham also from Castleknock College represented the county at the Finals. In the Senior Category of the competition, Fingal were represented by Líanna Connolly, Iria Carcoba, Ava Sansovini and Aoife Goslin rom Coolmine Community School with their business “Aura”.
The Fingal Student Enterprise County Final 2022/2023 was sponsored by Dublin and Dún Laoghaire ETB (DDLETB), Blanchardstown Centre, SimTech Aviation and One4All.
Bringing Business into the Classroom
There were 82 student businesses in contention across three main categories for the Final in what is Ireland’s largest entrepreneurship programme for second level students. The initiative, funded by the Government of Ireland through Enterprise Ireland and delivered by the 31 Local Enterprise Offices in local authorities throughout the country, saw 25,000 students from almost 500 secondary schools across the country take part.
The programme supports students to create, design and market their own business, all with the hope of reaching the National Finals.
Students get to find out what it’s really like to be an entrepreneur and get a practical, hands-on taste of real-life business from coming up with the idea and business name to making and supplying a product or service and dealing with customers. Students taking part get to attend workshops, receive in-school talks from business mentors, benefit from visits out to local businesses and take part in a County Final.
The Programme is open to all second level students from 1st year to 6th year and runs from September to May each year.
Benefits to Teachers & Students:
- Learn lifelong skills such as teamwork, public speaking, overcoming obstacles, tenacity, managing finances, customer service etc…
- Provides practical uses for business studies topics
- Combines classroom learning with real-life experiences
- Opportunity to meet and learn from entrepreneurs in the local community
- Excellent PR opportunities for schools
- Excellent support tools for teachers, students and schools
Over the 20 years that the Local Enterprise Offices have been running the Student Enterprise Programme, the scheme has seen some fantastic student businesses set up.
Find out more at http://www.studententerprise.ie/
