Elly Northrop, Talitha Snow and Eliza Dodman spent 16 weeks working on a Business Plan to regenerate Worthing’s Lido. The three students were competing against teams from Worthing and Northbrook College. Each college had to write a realistic business plan which was submitted in week 15 and then deliver a 10 minute presentation of their ideas to a panel of judges and the other teams in the final week.

Elly, Talitha and Eliza named their team the ‘asphaleians’ and took to work surveying the public, interviewing local business people and gathering market research from the local tourism centre. They then analysed all their data and decided on implementing a community based theme for the project.

The students wanted their ideas to have actual value and to be useable within Worthing’s local community, to have all products sourced locally and to increase an awareness of health & fitness. They also wanted costs to be kept to a minimum and were leading the field by making all their improvements come in at just under £100,000.

The idea of providing an Activity Hire Centre to rent skateboards, bikes, scooters and blades for people to ride up and down the promenade really impressed the judges.  As did having a brand of ‘I Love Worthing’ clothing and installing an ice cream parlour that has the largest range of ice cream in Sussex!

The Enterprise Project has been a new initiative at asphaleia and to win a competition in our first venture has been an amazing achievement.

Talitha said of the project “We have all learnt so much about each other and if we wanted to go and start our own business we would have a ‘heads up’ on how to start”.

Paul Stoggles, one of the judges highlighted that the quality of business plans and the amount of research conducted by the team was as high a standard as he has seen in many years of teaching.

Elly was asked what she thought helped make them win, she replied “I think we won because we put so much time and effort in and the fact that we had a mood board that was so detailed. And our business plan was very detailed. Also the fact that our speech and answers were so on point.”

She went on to say “I have really enjoyed my time doing this course as it was really fun and I made some amazing friends out of it”.

Congratulations to all three and to Eliza for giving birth on the day of the presentation. A great omen for the group.

Councillor Ann Barlow, The Mayor of Worthing joined local councillors Nigel Peters and Hazel Thorpe as well as staff from Asphaleia, The Job Centre and Northbrook College on the 11th April to celebrate the success of a group of young people dedicated to helping others in their local community. The celebration event held at the Empress Suite at Marine Parade, Worthing was organised to highlight the great work and effort of 12 inspirational young people aged 16-24 who graduated from the Prince’s Trust Team programme.

The Young People on the Prince’s Trust Team Programme at Asphaleia Training completed a 12 week programme which included a variety of team building activities, a week-long residential trip, a community project and two weeks of work experience during the course. They also received advice on how to write CVs as well as each gaining a nationally recognised qualification.

More than three in four young people on Prince’s Trust schemes move into work, education or training. The Prince’s Trust will help 50,000 disadvantaged young people this year, giving them the confidence and skills to turn their lives around.

For more information please call Candice Kelcey-Archbold on 01903 823546 or email candicekelcey@asphaleia.co.uk.

The media group went to Brighton recently to do some research for their final assignments in iMedia. The trip started at 9am in Worthing where everyone gathered at the train station to pick up their study packs and get their tickets. Once the group got to Brighton they spent an hour and a half in the library sourcing four comic books or graphic novels and reviewing them to criteria set by their tutor. The students were interested to find out that there is more to comic books than Batman & Superman! They made comments on the quality of the books based on storyline, artwork, layout and listed their likes and dislikes. They also outlined some of the main characters based on appearance and personality.

Once the hard work was over the group walked the short distance to Sydney Street in the North Laines, and after a quick detour to the Pick ‘n’ Mix shop visited Dave’s Comics. A virtual cornucopia of graphic novels, first editions, action figures and various other popular culture items.

Some of the items which stood out were the R2-D2 backpack, which drew a few giggles from the group; a novel called Alice in Sunderland which was a mixture of live photos and drawings; and a Kurt Cobain figure.

Max Ciccone picked up a Halo Reach action figure to add to his collection, and James Stoner picked up a WW2 graphic novel for 50p!

After a quick packed lunch in Pavilion Gardens, in glorious sunshine, it was time to catch the train home (via Millie’s Cookies!).

Everyone had a great day.

Interested in achieving a qualification in Media? We are enrolling weekly so contact Katerina or Vanessa on 01903 823546 TODAY!

As the third Ready, Set, Go programme of 2012 comes to an end with participants producing their own music track, the team have been reflecting on a variety of experiences. To date 15 young people have taken part in the Ready, Set, Go; 9 of them are now engaged in learning.

The first programme in January included a trip to Jamie Oliver’s Recipease in Brighton. They have a café and shop selling Jamie’s chosen produce but they also have a training kitchen with space for 16 trainees to experience new cooking skills.

Unfortunately, Jamie wasn’t there to greet us but Steve, the chef, taught us how to make an amazing South-East Asian Prawn curry. Everyone enjoyed learning some new culinary skills and using new ingredients such as; Turmeric, Paprika and Mustard seeds. The best bit by far was tasting each other’s spicy efforts as we went along.

The boys had a competition to see who could make their curry the hottest with the most chillies. Glenn won the challenge and ate his own creation with 3 monster chillies!!

In February, Brighton & Hove Albion Football hosted a group at the AMEX. During the first week, Steve and Kelly took the group on an ‘access all areas’ and saw the players’ changing rooms, the corporate hospitality boxes and were even able to walk right upto the pitch.

The young people completed the 2-week programme with a qualification to put on the CVs they created, gained great memories and made new friends.

Recently, the question of “what is success?” has been flying around our office, evoking heated debates and inspirational quotes.

It can be pretty daunting for our young people to come to a new place, meet new people and try new things so we like to think that those who take the brave step to attend can consider themselves to be ‘a success’.

The next Ready, Set, Go! programme starts on Wednesday 25^th April

Gain a qualification, extend you CV, make new friends, try something new and get the support you need to continue your learning or to help you find a job!

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