Young Enterprise team celebrate Spring Fair success!

Congratulations to this year’s Worcester Sixth Form College Young Enterprise team, Athena who were crowned overall winners at the weekend’s Spring Trade Fair and won an award for best product for ‘My Amego – a small children’s toy that aims to promote mental wellbeing and build emotional and communicative skills.

The toy is a small plush character with a series of coloured pompoms corresponding to emotions. The team say that the child can zip the emotion they are feeling up and the caregiver can discuss their feelings with them. It is intended that this will help children who may find talking about, writing or expressing how they are feeling difficult.

Carla Shipley, Marketing Officer, for the team, said: “We feel very passionately about our product as we feel that if mental health awareness was more available to children from a younger age, it would help with tackling the mental illness crisis in adolescents.”

Preparation for the Spring Fair involved design and manufacturing with consideration being given to finances, market research and building Athena’s digital presence. The team are now preparing for the South Worcestershire Young Enterprise showcase in a few weeks where they will deliver a presentation to the panel of judges and hopefully win a place in the next stage of the competition!

Edward Senior, Principal, commented: “I am delighted at the entrepreneurial spirit demonstrated by the students and proud that they chose to respond to such an important issue for young people. At Worcester Sixth Form College we believe that positive health and well-being is key for students to thrive and succeed at their studies.  To this end, tackling the stigma around mental health and promoting positive mental health has been a priority for our pastoral team. We have established a mental health peer awareness group who have been trained in conjunction with the University of Worcester to spot signs of poor mental health, have a conversation and signpost to support. The group have also organised successful College events for World Mental Health Day and Time to Talk Day and are putting together a booklet of support for mental health for students. It is greatly to the credit of young people that they are prepared to tackle issues that people of my generation saw as threatening.”

Congratulations and good luck!