Gisborne Secondary College students have stepped up in term four to complete the Gisborne’s Social Innovators program, connecting businesses and the community to a pipeline of talented young people.
More than 40 students took part in the program, which gave them the opportunity to collaborate with community and business partners to bring their ideas to life this year.
Key themes that participants have previously addressed include finding ways to promote care for the environment, enhancing health and wellbeing, fostering community connectedness and reimagining learning.
Sunbury Cobaw Community Health community and partnership engagement officer Matt Gleeson attended the program and said the pitch event was fantastic.
“Young people have very good ideas, we just don’t know because we don’t ask them,” Mr Gleeson said.
“So often we talk about young people in the context of ‘that they’re not interested in things, they’re not interested in the future or community life.’
“But the pitches that we’ve heard really demonstrate that young people can come up with some amazing ideas and really do think about what’s happening around them in the world.”
Year 9 students Angus and Noah said they found the program interesting and learnt how to market a product and come up with new ideas.
“It was pretty hard sometimes, but once you found a cool idea it was easy to elaborate on. We changed our ideas quite late but I think it worked out for the best,” they said.
“[We] learned how to generate ideas a lot more efficiently and effectively. If I could see my own idea portrayed on something, that would be pretty cool.“
