Inspiring young people in business enterprise vital

Tauranga Chamber of Commerce CEO Stan Gregec. Photo/John Borren

"It is never too young to inspire kids to be entrepreneurs and the fundamentals of a basic business mindset."

Those words come from Tauranga Chamber of Commerce chief executive Stan Gregec who has commended the "brilliant initiative" from Oropi School.

"As the Oropi School project shows, making business fun and real goes a long way and can work at any age."

"It's not about imposing business values on kids. What a change from my day when there simply nothing like this at primary school and the options at secondary school were not much better."

Today programmes like this and ones such as the Young Enterprise Programme, which the Chamber delivers at secondary school level in the Bay, are much more project based and stimulate real business opportunities, he says.

"Kids learn that to succeed in business, you need to be able to work in a team and combine many diverse skills and talents."

"It's not just coming up with a business idea. You need to know how to sell yourself and your idea and take it all the way through to successful delivery.

Business isn't everything, or even the most important thing you can learn about at school."

"But it's a jolly useful set of skills and aptitudes that will serve you well whatever career path you end up taking."

Priority One Instep programme manager Lyn Parlan was previously a primary and secondary school teacher and is passionate about ensuring young people have the skills to succeed in the future and that business has access to a skilled and talented workforce.

Priority One Instep programme manager Lyn Parlan. Photo/supplied

"Initiatives like this are brilliant as they teach children valuable transferable skills through 'learning by doing' and obviously they are having fun while they learn which is also extremely important."

Skills learned were a good fit with the key competencies in the school curriculum and met industry needs.

Advantages gained were a work-ready workforce that can adapt to the fast-changing world of work, she says.