Year 7 St George's students got a real-life taste of business last week when they had to pitch their products to industry experts.
It was the culmination of months of planning, strategy and creativity for the students, who were tasked with finding a 3D solution to a live problem in the bee industry, as part of the school's innovative Young Business Enterprise Programme.
The project began back in March with a visit to Tweeddale's in Taihape, one of New Zealand's largest beekeeping operations, introducing the children to the bee industry, the extraction process, key products and industry issues. A session at GDM Retail Systems in Whanganui, global retail design specialists, focused on entrepreneurship, design and engineering; while a visit from Kai Iwi beekeepers showed bees and hives close-up, with local businessman and apiarist, Rob Bartley, bringing his award-winning Hiveplus hive tray into the classroom.
Out of this immersive first stage, packed with hands-on experience and inspiration emerged a compelling brief, identified by the children. Discovering that many bees die during feeding, falling from the feeder into the sugar syrup, their challenge would be to design and produce a new, improved feeder to prevent this from happening.
Working in teams of four, each with a clear role, they first produced mock-ups then fully-costed prototypes of and proposals for their final designs to present to the experts, Mark and Kim Tweeddale of Tweeddale's and Brad Williamson of Axiam Plastics.