Aico host Enterprise Challenge for Shropshire Secondary Schools

Aico, the European market leader in home life safety, have recently delivered an Enterprise Challenge for Year 10 students of Meole Brace and Thomas Adams Secondary Schools as part of their commitment to supporting education in the local community.

Through their Corporate Social Responsibility programme ‘Aico in the Community’, Aico is focusing on supporting children through a range of initiatives, such as assisting schools with their careers programmes, preparing the future generation for the world of work and exposing students to some of the skills they may need in the future.

The pandemic was the driving force behind this initiative, with students having limited access to their Futures Programmes. To combat this issue, colleagues at Aico developed an Enterprise Challenge which aims to provide pupils with more knowledge about the world of work.

Aico colleagues began the session by raising awareness of the number of careers options that are available, explaining the types of job roles within Aico and pathways to work.

The Enterprise Challenge was themed around bringing a home life safety product to market. Each team was split into various job roles including Product Development, Finance, Sales, Operations and Marketing to focus on packaging, customer service, budgets and sales. The Enterprise Challenge concluded with each team presenting their business plan. Examples included a medical emergency drone, a defibrillator compacted into a wearable hat and a motorcycle helmet with shock-proof airbags.

Laura Richardson, English Teacher and Careers Lead at Meole Brace School comments “The students benefitted lots from the task set by Aico and from the business expertise that colleagues brought to them. I’m really grateful to Aico for running these Enterprise Days, as without Work Experience, our Year 10 students have missed out on a significant opportunity and the range of skills they could have acquired.”

A student at Thomas Adams School said of the Enterprise Challenge “We really enjoyed it, we liked learning about the company and being able to be creative. Overall, it was a very good event and I’d happily do it again.”

Aico colleagues are empowered to take part in school engagement opportunities to promote confidence and help to create safer communities. Lewis Hayward, a Marketing Executive at Aico comments “I had a great time attending Meole Brace School for the Enterprise Challenge. The students came up with lots of unique and interesting products and it was great to see such passion and creativity towards creating these life safety devices. Now that things are opening back up I can’t wait to get back into schools again.”

Aico will continue their support to education throughout the year with similar challenges, as well as hosting educational events for primary and secondary school students at their headquarters in Oswestry.

To find out more about Aico in the Community and how Aico support education, please visit: https://www.aico.co.uk/in-the-community/