Entrepreneurs Stephen and Mary scoop Santander enterprise awards
Pictured with the University's Santander Branch Manager Kiren Sirha (second right) are the 2015 winners (left to right) Sam Forrest, Mary Kolu Massaquoi and Stephen Bond.
Thu, 30 Apr 2015 11:32:00 BST
Stephen Bond and Mary Kolu Massaquoi receives £500 each for their business ventures in the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards
WHEN the University of Huddersfield took its first steps in a nationwide enterprise contest organised by one of the world’s biggest banks, it mustered a diverse range of burgeoning student businesses.
The University recently joined Santander Universities, a global network that encompasses over 1,000 universities in 20 countries. One of the benefits is that entries can be made for the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards, which offer valuable prizes in both an undergraduate and a postgraduate category.
In the first year of Huddersfield’s membership of the network, it was decided to run an internal competition to identify the University’s entrants for the contest, said Senior Business Advisor Philip Clegg. Applications – in the form of a business plan – were invited from candidates who were already receiving advice from the University’s Enterprise Team, based in The Duke of York Young Entrepreneur Centre.
Winners
Winners and a runner-up have now been selected. In the undergraduate category, the prize goes to Stephen Bond (pictured left), now completing his degree course in advertising but already running his own enterprise, Panda’s Kitchen, which creates and markets a range of flavoured liqueurs.
Stephen receives £500 from Santander, as does Mary Kolu Massaquoi (pictured right), who was awarded the postgraduate prize. A former nurse and midwife who has studied nutrition and public health at the University of Huddersfield, she has written and performed a series of radio programmes titled Calls to My Sister. These consist of entertaining phone conversations that impart important public health messages and they have been broadcast by a number of African radio stations, earning very positive feedback. The programmes have tackled issues ranging from basic hygiene to the Ebola virus.
Now Mary – who was born in Liberia and who has worked in Africa and throughout the UK – aims to develop the concept, and is receiving back up from the Enterprise Team.
It was also decided to offer a £250 runner-up prize, and this went to Sam Forrest (pictured left), a student on the BA Enterprise Development Degree, whose business named Uni Media Mash is an online trading platform for students, making it easy for members to trade university textbooks and media-related items simply and safely with each other on campus.
Philip Clegg said he was pleased that the University had made its debut in the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards and in future years the business planning competition would become an integral part of the Enterprise Placement Year that is on offer at Huddersfield. Also built into the course will be the Santander 60-Second Pitch contest, held four times annually. For this, young entrepreneurs must submit short, snappy video pitches for their ideas, and their entries receive online votes.
Already, a number of students have been given expert help to record their pitches to the highest-possible technical standard.
