Green For Go: Showing students they can save the planet by starting a business
PNE interaction:
Designed and delivered by PNE, in partnership with learning and development organisation FIRST, Green For Go! developed the enterprise skills and entrepreneurial aspirations of college students across the North East.
The Programme
Delivered by PNE in partnership with learning and development organisation FIRST, the Green For Go! Programme, brought 172 learners from four colleges across the North East into a world of entrepreneurship and sustainable thinking; providing 14 hours of college-based workshops to each student and a one-day inter-college competition at the Newcastle Discovery Museum.
The exploration of entrepreneurship, as a way of solving social and environmental challenges, offers the perfect vehicle through which to capture this ambition: connecting key skills such as ideas generation, teamwork, research and public speaking, with the concept that businesses create an opportunity for a good idea to be scaled and create real, meaningful change.
Green for Go! has helped me feel confident speaking in front of an audience. Getting through to the final and winning for the college was the best thing I have ever achieved.
Commencing in October 2019, Green For Go! launched with the provision of 14 hours of learning to every student. The workshops were centred on a single challenge: develop and pitch a business idea that fitted one of four briefs set by local entrepreneurs. All the briefs were aligned with a social or environmental issue. Students were then supported to tackle the challenge with a diverse range of sessions designed to develop their ideas generation, problem-solving, teamwork, research and public speaking skills.
A competition between teams provided the finale for the workshops, with one team working on each brief going on to the Grand Final to compete against other colleges.
Inspiring young adults to meet, their full potential is great to see, and programmes such as these can make a huge impact on their futures, by giving them confidence. - Irene Allcroft, Director at Capacity
The outcome
The programme gave the participants an opportunity to learn in different ways, connect with new peers, pursue achievements to help them build their CV and explore what their aspirations are for life after college.
The project recorded:
A 271% increase in the amount of students reporting they feel ‘very empowered’ to help solve problems like climate change.
A 138% increase in students reporting they feel ‘a lot’ or ‘very’ confident, that they could set up a business.
A 116% increase in students reporting they feel ‘a lot’ or ‘very’ confident, speaking in front of an audience.
Learners have benefitted enormously from the Green for Go! project. It is exactly the type of project we are looking to get our learners involved in to be able to prepare them for employment. - Sarah Thraves, Business and Leadership Teacher at Newcastle College
Download our full programme evaluation to learn more...
Want to be part of the next programme?
If you are interested in being involved with the next iteration of Green For Go! get in touch with Charlotte Windebank, Managing Director of FIRST at charlotte@firstnetwork.co or on 0191 691 7444.