NESTA challenges young people to make a mint
15/11/2007
"Ensuring young people have a keen sense of entrepreneurial spirit is vital to the UK's future prosperity."
"Making a Mint" 2008 is open to teams of children from across the country aged between seven and fourteen. The team that makes the most money from a pack of mint seeds by the closing deadline of 6th July 2008 will be named winners.
Last year the winning team of the overall competition raised £626.63 with ideas ranging from selling mint seedlings to making and selling minty products such as scented pens, bangles and hair braids, mint decorated stationary, and mint flavoured drinks. With few guidelines, children are being encouraged to be as creative as possible.
Each team that enters will have to come up with its own name and record its activity, including profit and loss, on specially designed balance sheets. At the end of the competition, NESTA will look at the top 50 entries which have made the most money and award a prize to the most creative money-making scheme.
With the competition designed to educate kids on the science behind growing a plant from seed, as well as teaching them valuable entrepreneurial skills, teachers are being urged by NESTA to enter groups of children from their classes. Packs can be secured by visiting www.planet-science.com/outthere/mint. Youth groups and individual teams can also enter.
The winning team will receive £1,000 worth of Amazon or Garden Vouchers for their school or group plot with £250 of vouchers for the four runners-up.
Katie Walsh, head of Planet Science, NESTA's online resource designed to support and improve science education, said:
"Ensuring young people have a keen sense of entrepreneurial spirit is vital to the UK's future prosperity. We need to help them now to secure the types of skills they will need when they go into the working world – a world that might be very different to what we know now. A healthy attitude to risk and creative thinking are just the beginnings of what they'll need to succeed. We're really looking forward to seeing what this year's crop of young entrepreneurs comes up with."
For further information, please contact the NESTA press office on 0207 438 2643. Photos of the event on Thursday, 15 November will be available.
NESTA
NESTA - the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts - is an executive Non-Departmental Public Body established by the National Lottery Act 1998 with a remit to 'support and promote talent, innovation and creativity in the fields of science, technology and the arts'. With endowed funds of over £300 million, its mission is to transform the UK's capacity for innovation. It does this in three main ways: by working to build a more pervasive culture of innovation in this country; by providing innovators with access to early stage capital; and by driving forward research into innovation, with a view to influencing policy.
NESTA's Future Innovators Programme aims to develop the skills and attitudes needed by young people for the future economy. We do this by supporting the professionals and institutions that work with young people, to test new approaches and disseminate ideas and resources about 'education for innovation'.
NESTA's Planet Science is a free popular online resource and newsletter for school students of science and their parents and teachers. It's a mix of interactive features, games and teachers materials designed to engage and inspire, and a free weekly e-newsletter to keep in touch with its audience.