Make Your Mark Blog

Greetings to all you Make Your Mark blog readers…I return to this blogging sphere to share my excitement, yet again, for all things Challenge (and Olympic and radio)!

So to recap…December 2008, John Hampden Grammar School was announced winner of the Make Your Mark Challenge 2008 in the 16-19 category with their idea, ‘True London Tours’ which wants to train homeless people to be tour guides at the London 2012 Olympics. Waldegrave School won in the 14-16 category with ‘My Little Athlete’ a hand held computer game based on the Olympics. Fast forward to last week and the teams came back to London to develop their idea further.

My final stop last week on the Tenner Tour was at Orton Longueville School in Peterborough. Enterprise veterans they may well be, but could they rise to the tenner challenge?

Yes! I hear them all cry! Despite having only started the challenge last week due to a whole week of school closures because of the snow, plus half term break the following week the business ideas and creative juices were flowing with participants keen to start ventures that could get off the ground immediately and get them on their way to make their first profits.

The first stop on the ‘Tenner Tour’ was at Sandringham School in St Albans and boy did they set the standard!

The participants, who were in years 7 - 12 began by pitching their business to me in 60 seconds.. outlining what their business did, who their audience was, how they had used their £10 and what they were doing with profits they had made.

Afterwards, they had to come up with the 3 unique selling points of their venture and then use them to write a press release or advert publicising their ventures.

Don’t look to the Square Mile for budding business success - the real talent is at City of London Academy, Islington!

MYM visited the academy yesterday with campaign Ambassador, Vincent McKevitt. Vincent’s business is valued at £10m and has been built up over just three years. He is The Salad Man and he has set up a chain of healthy-eating cafes called Tossed.

Vincent’s business experience was offered to students who are taking part in Make Your Mark with a Tenner, and his knowledge came in really handy because lots of their businesses are based on catering and the food industry. Businesses include a very entrepreneurial Year 7 student who has started making and selling his own popcorn. Yum!

So, it’s the 10^th day of Tenner month and Tori James, the Challenge & Club Manager at Make Your Mark has been busy running around the Make Your Mark office in London making sales for her Tenner business. Here’s what has happened so far……

Day 1 – Tori uses her £10 to order 16 postcards from an online photo printing service. Tori is the owner of some very unique and stunning photography. She has been on expeditions to some of the world’s most extreme environments, and she holds the record for being the first ever Welsh woman and the youngest British female to climb to the summit of Mount Everest (see www.torijames.com).

I visited the City of London Academy in Islington yesterday. To be honest I was a bit nervous - having started my own tenner project on the same day, there was every chance that the students at the Academy were going to put me to shame.

And guess what? They did! The room was buzzing with entrepreneurial ideas. The Tenner group met after school and started planning money-making schemes. Students quickly realised that they could work in teams and put their tenners together, so one group of boys will be working with £40 start-up cash!

It’s Week Two of Tenner Month. Thousands of young people are using Tenner loans to make profit and social impact and so I thought I’d have a go myself…how hard can it be?

I love baking and so I’ve turned my hobby into an entrepreneurial opportunity. I invested a tenner in flour, sugar, eggs, butter and some pretty chocolate hearts.

I’ve made vanilla cupcakes and heart-shaped biscuits and I’m selling them to the Make Your Mark office. I hope to acheive a social impact by donating any profit to Community HEART, a UK-based charity combatting the legacy of apartheid in South Africa.

When it’s the all-new Tenner map! Oh yes. Hot off the press, this map shows all of the schools and youth organisations taking part in Make Your Mark with a Tenner - all represented by a little dot (Tenner tangerine coloured, naturally!).

Ah, the magic that is google maps!

It’s really awesome to see that Tenner is UK-wide - and even awesomer to see that lots of schools from my old stomping ground of the North East are taking part. Hooray!

Check it out…

Make Your Mark with a Tenner is well under way and so now is the time to start telling the world about all of the exciting Tenner-fied activities you’ve got planned - because the world wants to know!

But where can I do this? I hear you ask. Well that’s simple - on the Tenner forum of course! It’s brand new and dying to hear about the latest Tenner happenings, so please show it some love and get commenting!

If you have a suggestion for a new forum topic them please send it on through to [email protected]

Here at Make Your Mark towers we love a good powerballad. So much so that each and every day we play one at 5.30pm, just so that everyone can sing along to the majesty of 80s soft rock.

Now that Tenner Month is underway we thought we would celebrate by playing a Tenner-themed powerballad every Tenner Tuesday.

It’s a TENuous theme but I’m sure we can do it!

Today’s options are:

• Nessun dorma - the Three TENors
• I’m not in love - TENcc
• TENder - Blur

So it’s the start of Tenner month - what a great opportunity to put those enterprising skills to good use and raise a bit of cash for a good cause.

Last night I started my very own Tenner project, and using some of the spectacular photography I’ve gathered from my expeditions I have decided to produce a range of stationery including postcards and greetings cards.

Visit my website to find out more and follow my progress - I’ll be keeping a detailed log of my successes and failures! http://www.torijames.com/blog/index.php

Tori James (Make Your Mark Challenge & Club Manager)

Well, nearly.

Tenner month is almost upon us - that’s when thousands of young people around the UK will be turning a ten pound loan from Make Your Mark into a profit. As if the profit wasn’t enough, they’ll also aim to have a positive social impact on their community or even the wider world. If like me you just can’t wait that long for the flurry of Tenner-related news, you might want to check out some Top Tenner Tips from our Make Your Mark Ambassadors. From transport, food, fashion and football, via roses and wheelbarrows, our Ambassadors have a wealth of weird and wonderful ideas to inspire you to take your Tenner further! It’s all in our Tenner toolkit.

Check out Make Your Mark doing a live ideas mashup at their team meeting last week on youtube!

www.makeyourmark.org.uk/ideasmashup

Local business ‘Coast and Country’ have set local secondary schools a challenge. They are opening their doors and inviting students to take a look at the reception areas of Coast & Country at Grange Town, Spencerbeck, Dormanstown and Skelton.

The Challenge

Students form the Redcar & Cleveland area are invited to spend time at the reception areas of Coast & Country at Grange Town, Spencerbeck, Dormanstown and Skelton. Students will have to look at the reception area from a customer’s perspective and suggest improvements. The teams will be invited to present in the Coast & Country board room in front of panel of business people.

With the help of two businesses in the region, it cost less than £320 to help 18-year old Dean Jeffries turn his life around from not having a great deal of burning career ambition to actually setting up his own social enterprise and wanting to take it forward as a real career opportunity when he leaves school.

Dean who is from Catcote School in Hartlepool has blossomed academically since undergoing the YENE Team Programme, which is an educational enterprise programme for people aged 15- 19 with learning difficulties.