Mayo’s student entrepreneurs begin road to national success

STUDENT entrepreneurs across Mayo have begun their journey in this year’s Student Enterprise Programme, with eyes on next year’s national final.

This Local Enterprise Office run programme will be delivered differently given the current restrictions across the country, and the final, on May 14 next, will be a virtual one.

This is 18th year of Ireland’s largest secondary school entrepreneurship programme and has seen over 200,000 students take part since it began. The final is usually held in Croke Park.

The students, who will compete across three categories, Junior, Intermediate and Senior, will see judging take place virtually via electronic submissions. Each student enterprise is challenged with creating, setting up and running their own business, which must show sales of their service or product.

The programme will also include two additional categories that students can enter - the Most Creative Business Idea video competition for the senior category and My Entrepreneurial Journey category for the Junior and Intermediate categories.

The schools from Mayo taking part this year are: St. Brendan's College, Belmullet, Mount St. Michael Secondary School, Claremorris, St. Tiernan’s College, Crossmolina, Sancta Maria College, Louisburgh, Scoil Muire agus Pádraig, Swinford, St. Gerald's College, Castlebar, Coláiste Chomáin, Rossport, Coláiste Pobail Acla, Achill, Ballinrobe Community School, St. Joseph's Community College, Charlestown, St. Joseph's Secondary School, Foxford, St. Louis Community School, Kiltimagh, Rice College, Westport, St. Muredach’s College and St. Mary's Secondary School in Ballina, Jesus and Mary Secondary School, Gortnor Abbey, Crossmolina, St. Patrick's College, Lacken Cross, Killala, and Davitt College, Castlebar.

Over 1,000 students from 21 secondary schools in Mayo took part in last year’s programme. The enterprise education initiative, funded by the government through Enterprise Ireland and delivered by the 31 Local Enterprise Offices in local authorities throughout the country, involved over 25,000 students from over 500 secondary schools across the country last year.

Mayo has had previous success in the competition when The Worry Bear Co. from St. Mary’s Convent, Ballina, won the Intellectual Property prize in the senior category, Sparkless from Gortnor Abbey won the Intellectual Property prize in the intermediate category, and The Nephin Turf Company won the award for Best Commercial Potential in the junior category in 2019.

Elaine Moyles, acting head of enterprise at Local Enterprise Office Mayo, said: “These are unprecedented times for our students and this year’s competition is giving them the opportunity to create businesses that can make an impact in the current real-world scenario.

“We are encouraging students to come up with business ideas that are adapted to the existing enterprise challenges and that are sustainable in today’s economic climate. With this in mind the programme has changed and even though the way it is being delivered (which is mainly online) is different, the students will still be able to work together in their school setting to develop their businesses.

“This will be our most challenging year to date in the Student Enterprise Programme’s history, but it will be exciting to see what new world businesses our students bring to the table.”

The programme has new range of online resources for 2020/21 at https://www.studententerprise.ie/, which will feature regular blogs and houses a full range of Student Enterprise resources for students and teachers.