A student shares her experience of the Enterprise in Action programme
Aisling (second left) with classmates from Palmerstown Community School and Citi volunteer Sarah Macasieb
Our Transition Year business class spent six weeks learning about entrepreneurship and how to run a business, and what an exciting six weeks it was!
We started by reading through the Enterprise in Action programme workbook with Sarah. From this, we learned the advantages and disadvantages of entrepreneurship and the traits that a good entrepreneur should have. Sarah did a fantastic job of teaching the class about the skills needed to start up a business which we used when we came up with our own ideas.
Sarah really encouraged us to pursue business ideas that we were passionate about. This resulted in many different unique propositions from different teams, ranging from positive mental health keychains to fitness apps.
Once everyone had an idea, we got to work on writing business plans and making the products. The tasks were demanding at times but everyone enjoyed the challenge.
When the day finally came to visit Citi Bank, everyone was so excited (and a little bit nervous!) to pitch their ideas in front of the three judges. It was really interesting to see all of the different team’s pitches and how they came up with the idea for their product.
Later, when the final team wrapped up their presentation, Sarah gave us a tour of the building. Everyone we spoke to on the tour was extremely friendly and gave us great insight into what it is like to work in Citi.
The final thing we did that day was announce the winning team for the pitch presentation. We all had put so much effort into our ideas and our products that it didn’t even feel like a competition. Even though there was only one winning team, everyone had lots of fun and we were all just so proud to showcase all of the hard work we had done over the previous six weeks.
This programme was hugely beneficial to all of the students in our class. From this programme we have developed many of our skills such as our problem-solving skills, oral and written communication, initiative and entrepreneurship skills and our ability to work in a team. It also helped to expand our imagination and be more confident.
We are extremely grateful to everyone at Citi who was involved and particularly to Sarah for devoting her time to teaching us how to be the best entrepreneurs that we can be.
For all of the students in our class, this experience has made business studies immensely enjoyable.