The quality of entries submitted for the Enterprise Challenge, an initiative of the British Council and Virgin Atlantic Airways has impressed the panel of judges.
Mrs Adetomi Soyinka, British Council Regional Manager, Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP) said the judges were wowed by the creativity of business ideas that young people aged between 18 and 35 entered for the competition.
The competition tasks participants to showcase ideas they have initiated in the past, doing presently or plan for the future that would create opportunities for themselves and others in three stages within a five week period.
Speaking at a press conference along with Brian Wilson, Director of Education, British Council, and Rachel Coffey, Commercial Manager, Virgin Atlantic last Thursday, Mrs Soyinka said the panel had a hard time deciding the 100 entries that have made it to the third stage of the online competition.
“It was very difficult actually cutting it down to 100 because we got close to 2,000 entries. Normally when we run competitions like this, we do not receive that number of entries, and they are not usually very good. I was humbled by the scale of the ideas and the proposition that people put forward or what people are actually doing. We are not easily impressed. The 100 were pretty good,” she said.
Mrs Soyinka added that majority of the 2,000 entries received for the competition, open to young people resident in Nigeria or the United Kingdom came locally.
Underscoring the importance of the competition, Wilson said the initiative would help prepare the youth, who will take over the business arena tomorrow, to be innovative and entrepreneurial.
“Nigeria’s demographics are changing. It is one of the few countries in the world that will have many young people of employable age. These young people will need jobs and opportunities. We want to identify young people who will create opportunities for others,” he said.
Also speaking, Rachel Coffey said it is important to provide the youth with relevant education and skills they may not necessarily get in the classroom, courtesy of the competition. She added that meeting Branson would be a good way to learn some of those skills.
“We have a famous entrepreneur at the head of our brand. As well as entrepreneurship is in our DNA, it is in the DNA of Nigerians as well. Richard Branson has endorsed this challenge. This whole competition is about development – giving people the opportunity to go ahead and develop their own businesses,” he said.
To be among the 10 that will face Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Atlantic Airways, top executives from Zenith Bank and others with their creative solutions in the final, the contestants have to shoot a video in which they talk convincingly about their ideas.
The winners, one from Nigeria, and the other, a Nigerian studying or working in the UK, will win flight tickets to the United Kingdom, in addition to sharing a N6 million business grant courtesy of Zeinth Bank.
They will also be mentored by experts who would teach them about running a business successfully and advise/monitor how they use the prize money.
Apart from the winners, the finalists will benefit from mentoring sessions to help breathe life into their ideas.
