On Monday, we went to the Merchant Taylors’ Hall in London to compete against 2 other schools in the Livery Awards. The idea of this award is to encourage a group of students to develop an environmentally friendly business idea and present it to judges. The three judges were: Jana Mackintosh, Nick Hewer (from the Apprentice!) and Tim Vallings. The six of us that took part were: Bethany, Lorna, AJ, Robert, Saoirse and Alex.

We were very grateful to be able to go in person this year to the Merchant Taylors’ Hall and present our idea. Our project is an app that helps you track your carbon emissions and gives you advice on how to reduce them, for instance giving you sustainable recipe ideas, or a breakdown of the best public transport in your area.

Although it was quite close and the other teams also had some great ideas and presentations, we won the first round and will now be taking part in the finals in February, at Mansion House in London. We’re all looking forward to developing our idea over the next couple of months.

This has been a great opportunity and we would like to thank all the teachers that have helped us on the project, including Ms McGowan, Ms Mummery and Miss Isaac. By taking part in this award, we have all developed confidence in public speaking and learnt the basics of developing a business idea.

Of course, we are also extremely grateful for the invaluable support of our two mentors, Jamie Longstaffe and Victoria Townsend, who gave us lots of constructive feedback which we used to improve our presentation.

We faced plenty of challenges along the way, especially because for many of us it was our first time doing public speaking. It was also difficult to find the time for all the meetings, as many of us had other commitments at the same time.

This opportunity has been very rewarding for all of us and we are excited to continue working together as a team on our project!

-Lorna and Alex