ICT Youth Challenge
Published
September 2008
Website
www.youth-challenge.co.uk
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ICT Youth Challenge case study
Introduction
Youth Challenge is a long-term intervention, being a competitive process involving young people aged 20 years or under in developing new ICT applications. The Challenge is explicitly aimed at giving young people skills and insight into opportunities they might pursue in the region, rather than head off to the cities.
The remit of participants is to come up with an idea for a product or service that uses ICT in a way it has not been used before. More generally, the project aims to develop skills in areas such as understanding technology, understanding Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) options, design and marketing, team work and communication.
It involves young people hooking up to networks of businesses, funders and other contacts that might be useful to them in future. In this way, the project aims to improve skill sets in rural areas of the Highlands and Islands. Around half of all schools in the Highlands and Islands are involved in ICT Youth Challenge and roughly 500 young people each year. Interest is increasing with recognition of its success.
Youth Challenge is delivered in a number of stages over most of a school year. Teams are formed of three to five people who can be friends, family or anyone else aged 20 or under. Most teams are formed in schools, but have also included other youth groups. Each team must have an adult mentor, to accompany them to events, including the final residential stage.
The first stage, The Seed Idea, is carried out on participants’ home space and entries are submitted online. Teams selected from this stage go forward to The First Pitch stage, in which they are given three minutes to ‘sell’ their idea to judges.
This stage is sponsored and hosted by a network of colleges which form the new University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute. Fifteen teams are then selected to attend a full-day event, The Forum, to develop their business ideas with the input of industry experts. The robustness of teams’ ideas is then tested by a 20-minute interview with competition judges.
At the final event of the challenge, The Hot House, six teams from the Forum stage attend a week-long residential course. During the week, teams work with experts in business development with a view to moving their idea towards implementation. The week also includes team-building and outdoor activities to broaden the experience and develop key skills of communication and team-work.