Inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs
Last month, we undertook our third and final visit to St Peter’s R.C. Primary School in Cardiff as we completed our project alongside 2B Enterprising to inspire the next generation of ambitious, healthy, enterprising and informed citizens.
Since kicking off the programme back at the beginning of the school year, we have visited children in St Peters’ year two cohort three times, delivering a range of activities alongside 2B to help raise the aspirations of young people whilst introducing them to valuable life experiences and key skills.
What is 2B Enterprising?
2B Enterprising is an education programme that teaches entrepreneurial skills to children from a young age. Founded by Sue Poole and developed by education and enterprise professionals, it is used in hundreds of primary schools in England and Wales to inspire future generations through innovative resources and activities, while making meaningful connections between businesses and schools.
What did Delio do during their sessions with year two students?
Following The Bumbles of Honeywood programme, pupils were taken on a journey with the Bumble family as they went on various adventures throughout Honeywood. Each story in the series centred around a different entrepreneurial skill that the main character needed to utilise to overcome their challenges.
After each reading session, we engaged the children in exciting activities, allowing them to develop and demonstrate each of these entrepreneurial key skills themselves. This included:
- Networking: After characters in the story were introduced to a whole host of new creatures, the children were given an activity in which they practised new introductions; discussing networking, meeting and shaking hands, making good eye contact, smiling and telling the people they met all about themselves. During this exercise, we introduced pupils to Delio and talked about what the business does and some of the key skills we use every day.
- Teamwork: When the story characters face the dilemma of overcoming a problem with bullies, our subsequent activities focussed on what it means to be a good person and look out for others. The pupils gave and received compliments and made wall decorations highlighting the key attributes of being a good friend. We then opened the floor to the children to ask questions about what it is like to work at Delio and what team activities we are involved in.
- Leadership: In the story’s conclusion, the main character must make big decisions and summon self-belief to become a great leader. To complement this, our follow-on activity involved practising negotiation skills and creative thinking as we helped the main character pack a suitcase full of useful tools for their big adventure. During this activity, we referenced how these skills are used by Delio in the workplace every day for lots of different situations, providing real-world examples that the pupils could identify with.
One of the key reasons we wanted to join the initiative was that we strongly believed in 2B’s mission of wanting to help grow entrepreneurial skills such as these amongst children in our local community.
Rhian Whittington-Walters, Delio’s Senior People and Culture Manager, comments:
“It was a brilliant opportunity to build a relationship with a school local to our head office over three terms, developing connections with teachers and pupils alike. It’s particularly rewarding to think that we may have helped raise the aspirations and skills of some future entrepreneurs, especially when the work was so rewarding for our own team too!”
Full details on the programme can be found on 2B Enterprising’s website.
