Cathay Craftz - 22 February
- 26 Feb 07, 12:48 PM
In a scheme that hopes to encourage a generation of new young entrepreneurs, .
Newsnight is following one scheme, Cathay Craftz, and its entrepreneurs are blogging their progress here on Talk About Newsnight.
We've had Newsnight in today! And Olli Barratt who organised the Make Your Mark With a Tenner challenge. It was great. , the Economics Editor, interviewed us and all our team of volunteers. You can see from the picture what a good team we have got!
It was great meeting Olli. He wasn't what we expected at all. Sometimes it is easy to think business people will be boring and not very interesting. Olli was really down to earth and took time to chat to all of the team as well as the four of us Directors. We're pleased he got a chance to see our school too.
It has been a busy week. We've had lots of orders to complete for teachers and also we are still completing our orders for the United Learning Trust conference and for the Manchester Science Park. People have definitely got quicker making the origami now. After all the practice we've had though, it's not surprising!
Prabhjot delivered the order to our catering company Eurest on Thursday. We made Chinese New Year decorations for the Academy dining room because the catering team were having a special themed lunch and serving Chinese food. Lisa Flowers, the Catering Team Leader was very pleased. We made posters with traditional New Year's wishes and also lots of golden pigs to show that it is the Year of the Pig this year.
We've done a raffle as a last chance to make some more money. One of our team, Ka Yan in year 7, has made a beautiful origami box and we've filled it with chocolates. We're selling the tickets in school for 10p.
So far, we think we've raised about £900. Of that, we are paying all our volunteers a £25 gift voucher as a way of saying thank you for all their hard work. That takes £225 out of our profit but it is worth it. Cathay Craftz may have been run by the four of us but it has been a real team effort.
With our profits we are going to sponsor five students at our partner school, Toli Secondary School in South Africa. By sending them £430 we can sponsor five students for three years. We are really pleased that our business has been able to make such a difference. For something that started so small, it's going to go on to have a big impact.
Thanks for reading our blog.
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urb scheme is awesome...wish i thought of it first!!.
the origami thing is areally good idea...wishyou the bestof luck
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Wish my children were so enterprising,all they do is sit around reading trashy novels and searching for the latest play station.These kids really know where its at.
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That's ok if you're not a baritone... Seriously, many years ago, Reader's digest ran a story of a teacher in the 2nd grade who instituted a journey for her pupils. She was going to teach them what a million was. She explained that adults threw the word around without ever considering , or perhaps even knowing , how much a million was. She got permission from the Principle,for the use of small spare room.... She told the children to bring in all the spare bottle caps , ( not possible today ) and to throw them into the room when they came to school every day. When the children reached the 8th grade, they opened the door to the room, and the caps were spilling out, all over the main floor... She enlisted the aid of every class in the school , and they began counting... The size of the piles were enourmous, but they were still short , 12,612 caps to make the million. Years later, one of her students returned to tell her how he had never forgotten to that day, what a million looked like. He also said that he never met a politician that had the slightest idea of what it was like.
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By the way check this company MDFI. Their stock is set to increase because of their association with Apple iphone and Complete Care Medical. Find more about this company and stock
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