Our school Greenhills College has had great success in The Student Enterprise Programme for many years. In the last number of years it has been run by two business teachers – Una McNamara and Maria Donoghue. The Enterprise Club has been run as an extra curricular activity during lunchtime and we also ran the club pre COVID on a Tuesday evening from 4pm to 5pm.
This enables students who have an interest in enterprise to further develop their business skills. We have had some great ideas through the years for both products and services alike. Enterprise has become an integral part of our school and we are very proud of the fact that our students have managed to get to the National Final in Croke Park on three different occasions.
We have had 1st place winners in both our Junior and Intermediate categories over the years. Our students are always very enthusiastic about their products from idea generation stage right through to product development. We encourage and nurture any ideas that our students have and this has led us to the success that we have had as a school in the Student Enterprise Programme.
As a result of taking part in the programme our students develop a self-belief and a realistic belief in their own abilities. They also develop key skills around being able to take their own initiative and in doing this being able to work on their resilience in terms of their attitude to failure. Being able to get back up and again with a new idea and further develop their entrepreneurial skills.
The Student Enterprise Programme has been instrumental in our school being able to embed enterprise as integral part of our school and has been fundamental in developing life skills for our students for their future lives.
by Maria Donoghue & Una McNamara, Enterprise Teachers at Greenhills College, Walkinstown, Dublin
