Young Carers Club Goes From Strength to Strength

The Young Carers Club at Barnwell School

This club meets every lunch time on the West Campus in C13.  There are a whole range of activities from playing games, reading books, making crafts or to their most recent venture winning £100 to start a Fair-Trade shop in school.

The students had a visit from Jasmine Gupta a local business lady who set up and manages the Cancer Hair Care charity.  Jasmine came into school and talked about Fair-Trade she then set the Young Carers and Young Chamber children a challenge to write a business plan and then pitch their ideas to her for a Fair Trade shop in school. 

The students worked in small teams to first produce and complete a questionnaire on whether Fair-Trade products were wanted in school; if so which products and how much other students would be prepared to pay for these.

 The next step was to produce a comprehensive business plan and present it to Rosie from Cancer Hair Care and John McBride for the Hertfordshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  The students put together a fantastic PowerPoint presentation and Jarrod Gregory made Fair Trade cakes to help them win the bid for £100. 

Then it was time to purchase, package, market and sell their products.  This was done on Friday 19^th November in the school dinning hall.  They invited along Sharon Taylor the head of Stevenage Borough Council who has a responsibility for Fair-Trade in the town.  The buzz was amazing and they sold all of their products.  They made a profit of £10 which will be put back into the pot to enable them to buy more products ready for next months Fair Trade Friday. 

Well done to all the Young Carers and Young Chamber members who have worked really hard to make this happen and have shown a real ‘can do’ attitude.