Ballakermeen students boldly go on to win enterprise challenge
A team of Ballakermeen High School students who devised an application based on satellite technology that tracks lost personal items has won the first SES Final Frontier Challenge.
The business challenge was organised by Junior Achievement as part of its drive to encourage young people’s entrepreneurial skills and sponsored by SES Satellite Leasing Ltd.
Under guidance from SES Satellite Leasing Ltd and Junior Achievement year 10 students from Ballakermeen High School were given the challenge to form teams and set up companies to market a satellite application product. Each company was tasked with nominating a managing director and assistant managing director then assigning marketing, finance, sales and design/ICT roles.
10 teams of 20 took part. Working with budgets in ?billions, the students seized the opportunity to be as ‘off the wall’ as they wanted, submitting a range of satellite technology-based ideas from natural disaster detection and early-warning systems to a rechargeable wristband equally suitable for locating friends at large-scale festivals or military personnel on manoeuvres. The winning team, Track IT - slogan ‘You Lose It, We Will Find IT’ - devised a satellite system to track down lost personal items such as keys or mobile phones, their inventiveness rewarded with top-up phone vouchers for each member and the honour of becoming the first recipients of the SES Final Frontier Challenge trophy, unsurprisingly a model of the Starship Enterprise.
SES Leasing Ltd was represented by Tara Orgar, Stephen Barritt and the company’s managing director Mark Guthrie who said: ‘Clearly the satellite industry inspired the students, judging by their enthusiasm for the challenge and how motivated they became as their involvement grew over the day. The satellite industry is unique and the big numbers involved – billions – fired up the students’ imagination, motivated them and gave them opportunities to express themselves in some very creative ways. SES Satellite Leasing Ltd was pleased to be able to give something back to the community in such a positive way and show young people that there are these types of jobs to be had in the Isle of Man.’
Junior Achievement programme manager Joy Spence, who co-ordinated the event, said: ‘We were delighted that SES Satellite Leasing Ltd not only sponsored the challenge but also invested so much of their time and effort throughout the day. A challenge such as this teaches students a range of “soft” skills and getting the teams to form into companies and assigning roles was all about taking ownership and assuming responsibility.’
Presenting the Track IT team with their trophy Mr Guthrie praised their ‘amazing presentation’ that met commercial, government and business enterprise needs and he added that the challenge may have helped produce a few ‘Isle of Man rocket scientists of the future.’
Photo caption - Ballakermeen High School SES Final Frontier Challenge trophy winners Track IT with SES Satellite Leasing Ltd managing director Mark Guthrie, extreme right and Junior Achievement’s Joy Spence, back row right. Picture Andrew Barton.
