Isle of Man Junior Achievement Team Wins Three Awards at Europe's Largest Entrepreneurial Event
A team of six secondary school students from the Isle of Man have won three awards at the Gen-E 2022 European Finals; Europe’s largest entrepreneurial event.
A team of six secondary school students from the Isle of Man have won three awards at the Gen-E 2022 European Finals; Europe’s largest entrepreneurial event.
Gen-E is a celebration of entrepreneurship and the achievements of European students, where thousands of young entrepreneurs aged 15 years old and upwards, showcase their cutting–edge business ideas to compete for a range of titles including Best Company and Best Start-Up of the year.
The Gen-E finals, which were hosted in Tallinn by Junior Achievement Estonia in July, saw a team of six A Level students from Isle of Man secondary school Ballakermeen, compete against dozens of student companies from across 40 European countries.
The team named ‘Atlas’ were representing Junior Achievement Isle of Man, and won first place in the following three categories at the GEN-E Signature Awards:
The entrepreneurial sixth formers took their awards home for an eco-friendly and innovative product called ‘H2sOap’, an effervescent soap tablet that, when added to water, reacts to form a foaming hand soap. With over one billion single-use plastic bottles thrown away every year, the Atlas team aspire to reduce this number as neither the product nor the packaging is made with zero single-use plastic. Incredibly, the H2sOap has been designed, produced, and manufactured completely from scratch by the Atlas team in the Isle of Man.
The momentous win – the first in Junior Achievement Isle of Man’s history – demonstrates the important work that Junior Achievement does in supporting Manx students.
Junior Achievement Isle of Man is the Island’s leading educational charity and supports young people with their transition from education to the workplace. The charity, which works in every primary and secondary school on the Island, supports 5,000 young people in the Isle of Man on an annual basis.
The charity provides real life experiences to a broad spectrum of young people allowing them to gain confidence and communication skills through a range of workshops and programmes which are supported by a team of over 200 Isle of Man-based business volunteers.
The ‘JA Student Company of the Year’ is such an initiative, which is how the Atlas team came to exist. The six students that formed Atlas initially joined over 100 local students who were set the challenge of creating their own business as part of the Junior Achievement Company Programme; supported by HSBC Channel Islands & Isle of Man. Over the last 10 months the Atlas team were personally mentored by several local business volunteers from high street banks HSBC and Barclays.
In recent years, the Isle of Man Government has invested heavily into its education system. This has included the development of several new junior and secondary schools and a range of impressive new facilities created at a number of schools.
Given its size, the Island has a profile far beyond that which would be expected; there is a wide variety of extra-curricular opportunities open to pupils across the education network, particularly in sports, arts, and music, with many schools competing in these areas at a national level. The Island has also attracted global praise for its innovative use of ICT in the classroom.
Isle of Man Government backed schemes such as the Department for Enterprise’s Graduate Employability Training Programme, Graduate Role Incentive and Department of Education Sport and Culture’s Apprenticeship Scheme have been designed to enhance recent school leavers and graduates employability as they enter the job market, with many providing formal routes to industry recognised qualifications.
Supporting the development of workplace skills in young people also extends beyond local Government support, to the Island’s private and third sectors. Apprenticeships and internship schemes have become a thing of the norm across many of the Island’s key sectors including construction, its finance and digital industries and engineering and manufacturing sector. A great example of a public-private funded training initiative is the Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre for Engineering; aimed at students and graduates looking to enhance their skillset and further their career within the engineering and manufacturing industry. Junior Achievement Isle of Man is also just one of several charities formed to improve young people’s skills on the Island - for example, charities LoveTech and Code Club were created to inspire and empower young people to explore career opportunities in STEM areas.