On Thursday 25 May, our Young Enterprise team ‘Solace’ travelled to Buckingham University to participate in the YE Regional Finals after our success in winning the Local Finals a few weeks prior.

There were a lot of nerves and anticipation for the event, and despite being up against some incredible teams, we put our best foot forward and delivered an engaging presentation and interview. We were extremely impressed by the level of talent exhibited by the other teams, who were all clearly as involved and excited as we were to have got so far in the competition.

Unfortunately, we did not win overall and so will not be advancing to the National Finals, but we offer our congratulations to ‘Seedlings’ on their well-deserved win. However, we are delighted to announce that we were given the ‘creativity’ award for our hard work hand-crocheting our products, and our very own sales director, Sanika Kaushik, won the prestigious ‘Journey’ award, the only award given to a single person!

Not only did Sanika make all of our prototypes and create the patterns for our crochet cuddly toys, but she single-handedly taught the whole team how to crochet. We could not have done it without her and we are so proud of how far we have all come as a team. Over the last 6 months we have all put in so much effort and time, working well together and making new friends along the way. We are all extremely grateful for the skills we have learnt and the experience we have had participating in the Young Enterprise programme.  

Overall, we managed to come away with 7 awards, reflecting our hard work and enthusiasm:

Winners of the YE Reading Showcase
Winners of the Oracle Trade Fair
Best Stand at the Oracle Trade Fair
Best Pitch at the Dragons Den Event in October
Organisation and Management Award at the Reading Showcase
Creativity Award at the Regional Final
‘Journey’ Award – Sanika Kaushik at the Regional Final

We hope to encourage anyone who wants to do Young Enterprise to go for it! It’s been an incredible journey for us all. 

Written by Eleanor Beale, Marketing Director of Solace