Customised keyholders from Araglin's young entrepreneurs
Araglin National School is ‘all business’ as the pupils of fifth and sixth class have been hard at work taking part in the Junior Entrepreneur Programme.
Working in teams across communications, sales, marketing and finance, as well as production and design, the pupils have developed and produced ‘Please Your Keys’, a customised key holder, which they have now put to market.
Speaking about how they came up with the product, Evan from the communications team explained that they had a visit from local entrepreneurs Kevin and Bridie from Fitzgerald Hurleys, who helped them along the way.
“We had a good few different groups and we all had different ideas. A local entrepreneur came in and he was doing Dragon’s Den with Ms O’Donoghue, Ms Barry and Sean O’Doherty, who was the other judge and they picked the best group which was ‘Please Your Keys’,” Evan explained.
With plenty of advice, tips and tricks about running a business and developing a product, the pupils set to work designing and creating a bespoke, customised key holder, using recycled and reused horseshoes as a feature.
Adam, one of the pupils, explained how the pupils decided to incorporate horseshoes into their product.
“We chose the horseshoes as well because we have Araglin Pony Club nearby and there’s a lot of people in the school with horses and we thought it would be a good fitting for it,” he said.
LOCAL SUPPORT
Teacher, Ms
O’Donoghue noted that with a class connection to the pony club, they have received a strong response to the appeal for old horseshoes, with neighbours and members of the public also donating and dropping off whatever was needed.
For pupils of Araglin NS, it has been a steep learning curve being involved in the Young Entrepreneur Programme and pupils have been learning across various subjects.
Pupil Rachel, from the finance team, explained what their role in the development of the product involved.
“We made order tracker forms to make sure everything was good and we took the names, email address and phone numbers of customers. We also made a sheet with the costings of everything we got, so we’re adding it all up to find out how much one costs and what we can sell it for,” she said.
CHECK... AND CHECK AGAIN!
Miss O’Donoghue explained that students have been gaining reallife experience in what it takes to become an entrepreneur and have been using their everyday school subjects to put their knowledge into practice.
“The actual making of the product involves art and science. We’re planning to have one or two bigger art days. It ties in with SPHE for media education, English in terms of oral language skills and letter writing. They’ve really learned the importance of reading over things. The children appreciate that this is going out to a wider audience. The double-checking of all the letters, the posters and the Facebook posts, there's been such double-checking and it's really taught them about editing and responsibility," she said.
“We were learning about VAT and about how much VAT we have to apply and how it would affect the business. We’re learning about calculating percentages of profit and loss. The finance team did a fantastic job of working out the percentage of profit and loss and taking it back and presenting it to the group. We were looking at what percentage we could give to charity while still making back our costs. It's a huge cross-integration between most subject areas,” Ms O’Donoghue explained.
Thus far, pupils of Araglin NS have seen a strong response from the community on their business venture with many volunteering their time and donating items needed.
With posters now up in their local shop, pupils of Araglin NS are looking forward to getting their hand crafted products out to the public, with a big art and production day planned for May 9. Best of luck to one and all!