Young Enterprise Scheme Regional Award Winners Announced

Young Enterprise Scheme Winners Announced

The Central Bay of Plenty's top young entrepreneurs were in Rotorua for the Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) Regional Awards

Over 40 students, teachers, and parents from Central Bay of Plenty high schools gathered Friday night at Digital Basecamp to celebrate and acknowledge the passion, dedication and committment these young entrepreneurs have shown over the school year.

Western Heights High School team, Kemu, took out the top regional award, and will be flying down to Wellington to compete in the National Awards ceremony held on December 6. Kemu is a unique and graphically rich board game which enhances and promotes te reo Māori to primary aged school children.

Tokoroa High School team, Tumekē Clothing scored big by taking out 2nd place and receiving 2 Excellence Awards (out of 13 in total). Tumekē Clothing is about increasing the visiblity of Te Reo Māori and finding ways to incorporate core Māori values into our homes, schools and workplaces.

Colin Kennedy, Head of the Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme described the YES Excellence Awards as being incredibly prestigeous, as they are strictly merit based, and was chosen by the sponsor of each award. The category each team recieved their excellence award in will be announced during the National Award prizegiving.

eNZidea from Western Heights High School took 3rd place for their Kiwiana themed cards and related app, which offer Chinese tourists the chance to learn a bit about Kiwi culture.

KeyIdeas from Taupo-nui-a-Tia College took out the 3rd Excellence Award for the region. Their innovative business ideas has seen the development of a small device which is installed in cars and collects data on where the car goes, at what times and how fast. This data is then synced to an app for parents who can then monitor their children's road use.

The evening was hosted by Matt Browning, Westpac finalist for the Young Business Leader of the Year and the awards were presented by businesswoman, Adrienne Whiteword, one of New Zealand's top fashion designers and CEO of Ahu Boutique.

Melanie Curry, the CEO of KiwiPacs, last year's Regional Award winner also spoke about her own insights and experiences along with the value of the YES experience.

YES Central Bay of Plenty Regional Coordinator and cofounder of Digital Natives Academy, Nikolasa Biasiny-Tule was overwhelmed by the range of businesses and the level of innovation, saying "its been amazing to see what has been accomplished in such a short space of time. If these are the business leaders of the future, they are innovators, developers and creators - we are in amazingly good hands!"

School participating this year are John Paul College, Western Heights High School, Rotorua Boys High, Tauhara College, Taupo-nui-a-Tia and Tokoroa High School.

Past YES alumni include the founder of Give a Little, Nathalie Whitaker, co-founder of Te Whare Hukahuka and Head of Māori Development at The Icehouse, Shay Wright and Kiwibank co-founder and CE, Peter Brock.

Links to YES company sites:

• Kemu Facebook Page
• Tumeke Clothing
• eNZidea Website
• Key Ideas

This event has been possible with the kind and generous support of Rotorua Energy Charitable Trust, Rotorua Lakes Council, Digital Basecamp and Digital Natives Academy.

ENDS

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