Member Article

Excelsior Academy celebrates young entrepreneurs

Businesspeople from across the region came together last night to celebrate some of the region’s most innovative and creative young entrepreneurs from Excelsior Academy, Newcastle.

This is the second year that Excelsior Academy’s Business and Enterprise Awards celebrated the achievements of pupils across the Academy’s four schools - Armstrong, Hadrian, Jefferson and Milburn, as well as the sixth-form Excelsior College.

The awards were run in partnership with “If we can, you can”, an online mentoring community inspired by the Entrepreneurs Forum, who are keen to support the successes of each and every young entrepreneur at the school.

Executive director of the Entrepreneurs Forum, Nicola Short was in attendance at the event. Speaking about the Forum’s involvement in the programme, she commented: “We at the Forum feel that it is very important to inspire young individuals in schools and colleges to want to aspire to do well.

“Whether that is to go forward and set up a new business or to be the next business leader, we feel that it’s important to provide them with access to people who can inspire them along that journey.

“Tonight has been inspirational - I’m absolutely blown away by the sheer determination of these young people.”

Over the course of the evening, 10 entrepreneurs gave short presentations about their interesting and inspiring career paths, before pupils were presented with awards in a number of categories including Creativity, Digital Media, The World of Enterprise and Ex-Factor.

Lynn Aitchson is Principal of Armstrong School Business and Enterprise School within Excelsior Academy, and believes that the ceremony is a very important occasion for pupils.

She said: “The awards help to raise pupils aspirations and self-belief whilst also helping them to go out and engage with the wider community.

“On a wider scale, it shows that there are real opportunities out there, both from an employer and employee perspective.”

Ammar Mirza, secretary general of Asian Business Connexions (ABC) and serial entrepreneur was in attendance at the Awards. Mr Mirza believes that ABC and Excelsior share a common ethos - to create business opportunities and to foster harmonious community relations within the area.

He added: “These awards typify the exciting, innovative and unique outlook of the Academy. This is an incredible achievement from the young people of our community, these are not future entrepreneurs, these are young people making a name for themselves now.

“Everyone at ABC is particularly excited at the opportunity of working with the Excelsior Academy providing real live business support from industry experts to the pupils to further enhance their learning experiences.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .