YES - Young Enterprise Scheme

The Fletcher Challenge Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) is a nationwide competition where students set up and run a business for 12 months as an extracurricular activity.

Although YES is a secondary school-based competition, the businesses are real.

They have a real product or a service, a business plan and marketing and sales plans. Each team assigns its members roles and responsibilities.

Like any business, some do very well while others fail.

YES manager of programmes Sue Henry says: "A few teams make ... a bit [of money] and some make quite a lot of money."

Business ideas can be service or product orientated.

But the majority of companies are product based. Sue says the quality of products and applicants gets better every year, with products becoming increasingly imaginative.

Charlotte Saunders, winner of the 2000 Todd Scholarship for Communication, rates YES highly and sees it as a "very valuable experience".

During the YES 2000 programme, Charlotte was sales manager for the St Cuthberts College entry, E-Style, an internet magazine.

During the year that E-Style operated Charlotte got hands-on experience at the inner workings of a business. The hardest task for her was cold-calling prospective clients.

As E-Style relied on selling advertising space to retailers, Charlotte had to convince businesses to invest in what she recognised was "a high-risk venture".

The YES programme widened Charlotte's horizons.

She says the experience made her "take another look at her options" when it came to tertiary study.

YES kindled an interest in business and Charlotte now plans to study law and science at Auckland University in 2002.

This year's finalists are announced on October 8 and the awards will be presented at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington on November 3.

Young Enterprise Scheme

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The jobs challenge

Common core values

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