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Fresh Minds

Fresh Minds is a new project intended to benefit young people and employers.
A team of up to 16 secondary school students visit an employer in their own work place to find out about the business and tackle a real business problem.
After a presentation of the problem from a senior manager or director of the company, the students work in teams of 4-6 to generate solutions which they then present back to the company through a group presentation. The company then decides on the 'winning' solution and (hopefully) implements some or all of the winning idea.
Benefits
Schools should benefit from improved problem solving and communication skills among their students. Employers should benefit from improved business understanding and communication skills amongh their staff.
How it works
A Fresh Minds visit is expected to take three hours, as below, but can be tailored to take more or less of a school day.
- 9am: students arrive, tour of premises, presentation of business problem
- 9.30am: students work in teams to generate solutions, referring questions to a representative of the company where possible
- 11.30am: student teams present solutions and a 'winning' idea is decided.
- 12pm: students leave.
In two previous pilots involving 22 students, Fresh Minds has proven to be highly engaging for students and beneficial to the company's thinking about how to tackle its business problem. It is essential that the problem is authentic, ideally urgent.
We support both the company and the school in defining respectively the business problem (must be authentic) and the student group (must be diverse).
If you are interested in enjoying this service, please contact Michael Sandison, our Director of Employer Engagement, michael.sandison@countec.org .
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