Pay It Forward Through Enterprise Skills

Click here to go to the IOSA Pay it Forward Website

Making a Difference to our Community together

Project

For six weeks only, we opened our own shop in Sheerness High Street in order to launch a pioneering Enterprise project.

Our aims were to:

• Design and implement a new Isle of  Sheppey website to include a  local business and community directory which will include educational resources
• Deliver ICT skills training such as how to use email or how to research the internet to local residents
• Introduce the concept of Pay it Forward where students, residents and local businesses do favours for each other and then pay it forward to someone else.

It is hoped through the success of the above aims we will help regenerate our local community and develop enterprise skills within the community.

Premises and Funding

The town centre shopping area has recently undergone a transformation leaving many premises vacant and available to let. The Council Regeneration Plan is committed to enhancing the areas that have been vacated so as not to create any rundown zones. After approaching our local council and successfully bidding for funding, we met with Sheppey Estates and entered into a letting contract for an empty premise located in the heart of the town centre.

We decided to go into partnership with a local charity Big Fish so as to further strengthen our community links and gain scales of economies.  The charity will have the shop in the evenings and weekends whilst we retain full use during the day.

The Shop

Our ICT A Level students are project managers for the new website. They designed the new website, collated information and will take responsibility for the success of the website project. They will be working in the shop and this project will allow them to pass Unit 9 of their OCR Level 3 course in a real life setting.

Local Businesses will be encouraged to come into the shop to register their business for the new website.

Our Hair and Beauty students as part of their accreditation for Salon Services L2 will be offering local residents beauty treatments such as pedicures and manicures. The students are so excited to be working in a real environment.

“I cannot wait to meet real customers and see what they think of my skills and abilities. It is such a fantastic opportunity” Yr 11 Sheerness student

Our food technology students will be working in the shop as part of their Jamie Oliver Home Cooking Skills course. They will produce exhibits of what healthy packed lunches should consist of and will work from the shop promoting healthy eating.

Our Business students will be teaching key ICT skills to the local community showing them how to use the internet, send and receive emails or use word processing tools.

Our Bite students are running their own Greeting card companies, designing and producing Christmas cards for sale.

Students throughout the school have been setting up their own businesses and are hiring space within the shop to sell their products. Our products range from student designed footballs, hand painted paperweights, Music Cds to homemade cakes.

“It will give us a chance to see the business world for real and not just be seeing it from the internet or books” Year 9 Abbey

Pay it Forward

Pay It Forward” is a book written by Catherine Ryan Hyde, but it's also an idea. The concept in our Enterprise project is that our students will do favours for our community and then ask local residents and businesses to then pay the favour forward to someone else. For example our students may design an E bay shop for a local business or teach an elderly person how to use the internet. In return they must pay that favour forward to someone else by perhaps becoming a guest speaker in school or becoming a student mentor.

Local residents and Businesses will be encouraged to come into the shop to register what help they require.

“I love the idea of helping people in my community and I think it shows respect for those that need help” Year 9 Abbey

Next Steps

Once the shop closes, the website will continue to be updated and Pay it Forward will continue to run from Academy premises.

If you would like to be involved or for further details please contact

Ms Kerr
Director of BITE, Vocational education and Community
Caronkerr@theisleofsheppeyacademy.org.uk