Winners of the State-Based Brilliant Business Kids Festival
Dilon Luke, October 27 2020, Coast Community Chronicle
Amber Herder and Sophie Lawson from Gorokan High School took out first prize in the NSW statewide Brilliant Business Kids Festival with their innovative, environmentally friendly idea, 'BioBalloons'
The Startup Business State-Based Pitch Competition is an opportunity for students involved in the Entrepreneurial Learning in Action Program to share their brilliant ideas with their peers and a variety of industry professional pitch judges. These ideas are honed and inspired by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals that address issues within each of their unique regions.
Amber and Sophie’s brilliant idea, BioBalloons, is an environmentally friendly way to continue using our favourite inflatable plastic at celebrations. The harmful environmental impact of these party decorations is what Amber and Sophie decided their focus would be and came up with a bio-degradable design for party balloons to reduce the waste that ends up in their local region.
Our education and program director, Leigh Morgan, attributes the girls’ win to their clear preparation, attention to detail, astounding research and overall persuasion regarding their idea.
“It was a popular product that could be easily scaled while simultaneously addressing the sustainable development goals, their pitch included details of the balloons chemical makeup as well as how these balloons would be manufactured.”
These girls were able to overcome the disruption of the pandemic and create a meaningful, sustainable solution to a problem facing our environment, well done girls for such an amazing achievement!
Gorokan High School can also attribute this amazing win to their Head Teacher of HSIE, Stephen Carey, as he oversaw the program from commencement to completion in his Year 9 HSIE class. Stephen has a background in Business Studies and mentions that being a HSC Business Studies marker has helped him throughout this program. Ms Ashleigh Hastings, an intern from Maquarie University, was also a great help to Gorokan as she facilitated in the initial stages of the program and was able to engage the students in finding a solution meaningful to them.
He notes that he was extremely proud of his class with all of them coming up with such amazing ideas that would have been worthy of the State-Based stage. The two runners up from Gorokan supported both Amber and Sophie in their campaign with practice pitches, video recording, sound, lighting and cheerleading.
From here, Amber and Sophie are automatically entered into the National Brilliant Business Kids Festival where they will pitch against students from across Australia for the national title.
