National award for Offaly student entrepreneurs

Students from St Brendan’s Community School in Birr have won the Natasha Lynch Commemorative Award for Excellence in Social Media award at the national final of this year’s Student Enterprise Programme.

The finals of the Local Enterprise Office initiative were broadcast virtually on Friday from Croke Park with An Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and Ambassador Derval O’Rourke speaking with host RTE’s Rick O’Shea, as students and teachers watched on from across the country.

Supported by Local Enterprise Office Offaly, the students won the inaugural Natasha Lynch Commemorative Award for Excellence in Social Media award.

The winning students were: Damien Delaney and Alex Byrne, who worked under the guidance of their teacher, John McIntyre. Their student enterprise was called: ‘Hology Photography’ which is a photography business selling pictures framed, unframed and on canvas of the local area and more.

They also plan to become a service provider taking pictures in the local area and expanding to even more products when Covid-19 restrictions are eased.

There were 72 student enterprises competing in this year’s national final in what is Ireland’s largest entrepreneurship programme for second level students.The initiative, funded by the Government of Ireland through Enterprise Ireland and delivered by the 31 Local Enterprise Offices in local authorities throughout the country, saw 29,000 students from almost 500 secondary schools across the country take part.

Praising the winning students at the national finals, Orla Martin, Head of Enterprise with Local Enterprise Office Offaly said: “This is a proud day for student enterprise in Offaly. We would like to congratulate the students, their families and their teachers at St. Brendan’s Community School on winning this national award in Croke Park.

She continued: “Year-on-year the Student Enterprise Programme continues to produce the very best of ingenuity and entrepreneurship amongst our secondary school students. It’s no surprise to see the challenges thrown up by the pandemic featuring in many of the businesses and the ongoing willingness for students to create businesses that not only sell services or products, but that help address ongoing issues in society. We see every year that the National Finals are not an end point for our student entrepreneurs, but a stepping stone on the next stage of their entrepreneurial journey. From our class of 20/21 we will see some business leaders and global entrepreneurs of the future emerge.”

The national finalists, who competed across three categories, Junior, Intermediate and Senior, saw judging take place virtually via electronic submissions. E

ach student enterprise was challenged with creating, setting up and running their own business, which must show sales of their service or product. The judging panel included business owners and representatives from enterprise agencies and associated bodies.

Since the Student Enterprise Programme began in 2003, over 250,000 students have taken part, learning key skills on how to create a business idea, start a business and grow a business.