The idea
The Swansea Primary Challenge brings to life the learning that takes place in the classroom. Over the next 3 years children from across Swansea will take part in an annual competition to design, make and sell a range of products to the public. The children learn skills such as creativity, teamwork, problem solving all the while having fun and working together.
The children decide what products they intend to make and come up with a funding plan. Once the products are made they use their financial skills to work out the costs of the items and how much to sell them for to ensure they make a profit.
The children then attend a fun exciting day in Swansea Castle Gardens where they hone their selling, communication and negotiation skills, supported by a team of judges from the Swansea business community. Throughout the process they apply their learning, have fun, acquire new skills and build their confidence in preparation for a brighter future.
What we'll deliver
- Engage Swansea children in real life business activities that will help them develop new skills and gain confidence
- Involve children in fun ways of learning that will improve their creative development
- Link businesses with schools to encourage children to develop the local economy by becoming leaders and entrepreneurs
- Empower children to become independent learners and thinkers and reach their potential
- Equip teachers with the skills and confidence to include enterprise in their teaching
Why it's a great idea
Youth unemployment rates in Swansea are high at over 20%. By bringing together the business community with schools we hope to help address this. We've worked with young people for over 10 years, winning numerous awards for our work with primary school children seeing first-hand amazing results with young people who've engaged, become motivated, and gone on to forge themselves a bright future. By making learning fun, by getting these youngsters engaged in these stimulating real-life activities they flourish and understand why subjects like Maths and English are important to help them sell their products.
Help us to help the next generation of young people be successful as future leaders of our city and entrepreneurs building new businesses.
We wish to raise enough money to run this competition for the next 3 years, without relying too much on sponsorship from local businesses which is getting harder to secure. We would also like to involve a wider community that shares our vision.
Steps to get it done
- Agree a date for the 3 day teacher training sessions.
- Confirm a date for the schools to attend Castle Gardens to sell their products
- Agree with schools dates for volunteers to attend the schools to support the children
- Arrange for the final celebration event this year being held at The Great Hall in Swansea University
- Start the organsing of the judges to go into the schools for the chidren to pitch their ideas.
- Book the guest presenter for the celebration event in July (Kev Johns ususally presents)
We have run this competition for the past 5 years starting with just 6 primary schools initially. The success of the programme has resulted in this year having over 50 local schools requesting our help in delivering this competition. We wish to make this competition more sustainable and are looking for funding for the next 3 years.The competition is in three stages with Stage 1 taking place in the schools where children pitch to the head for money to make their products, then they move on to making and packaging the products. Stage 2 is when they attend Castle Gardens for a day to sell their products in the heart of the city. This is a fun day with over 1000 children last year setting up their eye-catching stalls and using their communication and persuasive skills to ask the public to come over to their stalls and buy their products. The 3rd stage is held at the Brangwyn Hall where the children attend a celebration event to have fun and receive special awards for all their hard work.
