College Newsletter

NextGen Challenge

The illuminate:nextgen Challenge is a week-long immersive experience, that provides an opportunity for primary and high school students to be the confident, creative and capable young people they have the potential to be in an authentic learning opportunity.

 

ABOUT THE CHALLENGE

Facilitated by skilled facilitators at every step with the support of the local community, students work in teams to explore what it takes to get a new project or business idea off the ground, developing key skills in the following areas;

  • Communication: Speaking, Writing & Presentation Skills
  • Understanding: Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Digital & Financial Literacy
  • Solve Problems: Creativity, Problem Solving & Reflection
  • Work Smart: Collaboration, Organisation & Perseverance

Designed by Adam Mostogl (Top 30 Under 30 Australian Entrepreneurs 2017, Finalist for Young Australian of the Year 2015), the entire challenge provides an authentic experience of the working world while still being educationally relevant,  allowing students to grow and stretch at every stage. Students will be provided with opportunities to present industry-relevant submissions with opportunities to develop, reflect and refine all components with support from illuminate Education facilitators who design and deliver every component of the program.

DONCASTER SC PARTICIPATION

The Year 9 SEAL class, as well as a small group of Year 10 students, participated in the challenge for 4 days this week.

 

We have 7 groups all developing different social enterprise business ideas.

 

Our students’ focus for the illuminate:nextgen Challenge is to design a social enterprise that supports an issue within the local community. Our students have to develop a product or service they will offer to customers, prototype it using the resources available to them, and design a business case to showcase how the enterprise will make the desired impact.

 

The only other requirement is that the way in which each business supports the community must be done in a way that connects with the operations of the business (i.e. not simply just giving cash away).

 

To fully outline their solution, our teams must produce;

  1. a business case that justifies and explains your proposed solution,
  2. supporting financial information that proves the viability and benefit of the solution,
  3. a pitch deck presentation that gets key stakeholders and the community excited about your solution,
  4. a marketing campaign that outlines your thinking and creative approaches to promoting your solution,
  5. a demonstration site for your idea so people can experience a prototype of it for themselves,
  6. a number of problem-solving exercises throughout the challenge,
  7. and a number of other tasks to help set a strong foundation for the challenge.

 

Throughout the week, students have been viewing presentations and receiving mentoring that will teach them about public speaking, financial accounting as well as marketing and communications. On Thursday, each group presented their marketing strategy, financial tables, and business case to a team of judges.

 

Here are a selection of business logos that our teams designed:

STUDENT FEEDBACK

(so far)

What types of social enterprise/business are our teams developing?

 

TEAM 2

Our idea was to help young adults transition into adulthood with a care centre.

 

TEAM 3 

Preventing / limiting food wastage from local businesses.

 

TEAM 6 

Our idea is a restaurant that gets most of its food from an owner's farm. The goal of the restaurant is to give people who have been struggling to get jobs because of their criminal status or situation and basically give them a second chance so that they can build up their job status in order to get a better job.

 

 

What do you think you are going to learn/get out of your participation in this program?

 

We are going to learn how to run and create a business. We will also learn to work as a team and take advantage of our strengths while trying our best to overcome our weaknesses.

Isaac T.

 

I think I am going to improve on my communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills as well as learning how to design a business.

Miller T.

 

I have learned how to work under pressure.

Amanda M.

 

I have learned how to collaborate with others.

Marc M.

 

I have learned how to meet tight deadlines and put our heads down and work hard.

Nick J.

 

 

What have you enjoyed about the challenge?

 

We enjoyed the design process of our idea and the break in the monotony of the combination of cool and lockdown. Next-Gen was an opportunity for a change in the momentary hue less area of our lives.

Isaac T.

 

I thought that the illuminate:next gen challenge was very interesting and exciting. At first, I was a bit nervous because building a business is difficult, but it was so nice to be able to have the opportunity to solve a problem within our local community and it was very nice to be able to think of solutions that would be applicable in the real world, not just in theory. I'm very excited to see where the rest of the challenge takes us and our ideas. 

Chloe L.

 

 

NextGen was a very useful and noteworthy experience that I would recommend to other. Creates and tests your skills and enables you to grow you skill set for working under pressure.

Nick J.

 

 

I am most proud of how well we worked together and supported each other.

Tilly H.

Ms Fiona Cowan

High-Ability Practice Leader