General News
Year 9 student on the World Stage
On the Principal's page of this newsletter, we acknowledged Siddhanth Girish of Year 9, on his outstanding achievement in the 2020 TiE Youth Entrepreneurial Competition. Siddhanth has written the following report about his involvement in the competition.
This is your fellow Nossalonian, Siddhanth Girish from Phoenix House. I had an interesting Term 3, ‘studying from home’ and I wanted to share something with all of you from that time.
Entrepreneurship was always something that I was keen on trying and seeing if I had what it took to become an entrepreneur. From a very young age, I was exposed to a TV show named Shark Tank where investors invested in new start-ups. Watching many seasons of Shark Tank, made me realise that starting and running a business can be fun and interesting. In late August this year, a family friend recommended me to apply for a program on entrepreneurship with TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs, www.tie.org).
Called the TiE Youth entrepreneurship (TYE); the program annually invites young high school students to apply to have a go at experiencing entrepreneurship. At first, I wasn’t so keen on applying as I was not sure if I had the skills to become an entrepreneur but then I thought to myself, “why not give it a shot?”. So, I applied. The application asked questions such as ‘Why do you want to become an entrepreneur’ and ‘what skills do you bring to the table’ and I answered them quite honestly. A week later, I got an email saying that I had been accepted into the program. I was pleasantly surprised to note that I was number 1 of the 10 selected for the program from over 50 applications. I didn’t really expect to be accepted, and from there on, grew more keen, wanting to experience the program.
The TiE Melbourne Association included some of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs, who actively volunteered as mentors for the course. The course was scheduled between 1:00-5:00pm every Saturday for 4 weeks. In the first four sessions, we were taught one core topic each week- ideation, sales, and marketing, finance, and pitching. In the first week, we were organised into 4 teams. This is where I found my teammates Tanay Nagar (from John Monash Science School) and Shrey Taneja (Normanhurst Boys School, Sydney). We had worked as a team post the sessions to ideate business opportunities and come up with one that we would present in Week 6 of the program. At the end of the 6 week mark, we had to present our final product to a set of judges. Each team was appointed a mentor from TiE. Our mentor would guide us and give feedback on the work we produced.
Let me tell you a bit about our business idea. Our idea was based on a current global issue- recycling. Our goal was to involve more people in recycling plastic bottles, glass bottles, and aluminium cans to increase the current number of households participating. But how were we going to convince people to do so? So, we decided to create our start-up, bottle to bottle where we 'reward people for recycling.' By rewarding households with small amounts of money for every recycling initiative they take, we believed we could elevate the number of households that participate in recycling. So how did we do so? The centre of our system was an app where households would be able to interact with us. Through the app, customers or households can call upon collectors, who are either UBER drivers or individuals who are pre-signed with us. Just with a press of a button, collectors will arrive at the household to collect the plastic bottles, glass bottles, and aluminium cans. The collector would then enter the number of each item collected into the app which sends a notification to the customer regarding the amount of money they have earned. The collector then takes the recyclables to a bottle-to-bottle warehouse (can be privately owned by us or a public area) where the recyclables are stored. The recyclables are then sold by us to recycling plants, City Councils, or large corporations. The money earned through selling the items is then distributed in a calculated way among the households, collectors, and us. Here, we have satisfied the households by rewarding them, collectors, who are able to gain money through community service and us where we earn money without spending any money in the process. This was our business idea, and we were prepared to make the pitch to the judges.
The judges included three members from the Board of Directors of TiE. The judges would then appoint a winning team that would represent Australia at the TYE global competition. Week 6 was a very anxious week for me. But as a team, we worked hard and with some excellent guidance from our mentor, we won the TYE program 2020 Australian finals. We qualified for the World finals and are looking forward to representing Australia in the flagship event.
The finals are scheduled to be held in the United States in July 2021. I hope to make Nossal proud and strongly urge my fellow Nossalonians to try entrepreneurship and enjoy the learning opportunities it provides.
Once again, thank you for this opportunity
Siddhanth Girish
0X1
Duke of Edinburgh Award
Congratulations to Gauri Sawant who has completed her Silver Level Duke of Edinburgh Award.
The Award is a leading structured (non-formal education) youth development program, empowering all young Australians aged 14-24 to explore their full potential and find their purpose, passion and place in the world, regardless of their location or circumstance.
The key elements of our program are:
- It is open to all young people aged 14 to 24.
- There are three levels: Bronze, Silver, and Gold – each progressively more challenging.
- Each level has four sections that students must complete: Physical Recreation, Skills, Voluntary Service and Adventurous Journey. For those participating in the Gold level of the award, there is the added challenge of a Residential Project.
- Achieving an Award recognises individual goal setting and self-improvement through persistence and achievement.
Through this challenging program and journey of self-discovery, the participants:
- Are equipped and empowered to achieve their personal best
- Learn to take responsibility for their goals and choices
- Become connected to and actively engaged within their immediate community
- Make a real difference to society through their positive contributions and involvement
- Learn to persevere and overcome barriers to success
- Learn important life skills
- Increase their career opportunities.Participants like Gauri have 12 months to complete their qualification, (6 months if they have previously completed their Bronze).
In Gauri's program, in order to achieve her Silver Award, she participated in a camp in the Otways for 5 days/4 nights for her Adventurous Journey while for her Physical component, she continued to participate in Karate throughout 2019.
Gauri was shop volunteer at Vinnies for 8-10 months for her Service component and participated as a clarinetist in the school's Wind Symphony for her Skills component.
We congratulate Gauri on her commitment to self-development, a further example of a Nossal student embracing the challenge.
Gauri is pictured here receiving congratulations and her Award Certificate from Michelle Desaulniers who coordinates the Duke of Edinburgh Award at Nossal.
Music Special Offer
Are you looking for that special gift for someone? Why not purchase a Nossal High School Jazz Combo and VCE Combo CD?
These high quality recordings contain 8 tracks all played by our own talented Nossal Music students. Sure to become collector's items, the CDs are in limited supply and available from the office for just $5.00!
Get yours today and support the Music Department at Nossal High School.
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