MILE Gully High School in Manchester walked away with three of the six awards at the I Am The Change Young Entrepreneur’s Expo last Thursday at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge.

The expo and awards ceremony came as a culmination of a year-long business-practice programme in six rural high schools across Jamaica.

The day-long conference — which is sponsored by The Business Lab, Centres of Excelence, Digicel Foundation, Jamaica National Foundation, Mutual Building Society Foundation, Victoria Mutual Building Society and the Jamaica National Building Society — catered to 150 students, who not only displayed their products, but also presented their business plans to a panel of judges.

The student establishments ranges from a revolving locker rental service, at the Godfrey Stewart High School in Westmoreland; a monthly student-centred magazine called McG’z, at McGrath High in St Catherine; stationery supplies operations at Porus and Green Pond high schools in Manchester and St James; a healthy foods, fruits and supplies entity, at Mile Gully in Manchester; to a snack shop at Seaforth, St Thomas. The list of awards and winners are:

• Best Booth (presented by The Business Lab) Mile Gully High School;

• Best Operation (presented by Jamaica National Building Society) Godfrey Stewart High School;

• Most Innovative Team (presented by Digicel Foundation’s Kerry-Jo Lyn) Godfrey Stewart High School;

• Best Business Report (presented by the JNBS Foundation) McGrath High School.

• Best Presentation (presented by The Victoria Mutual Building Society) Mile Gully High School;

• Best Business 2011-2012 (presented by Dr Renee Rattray, programme manager of MBSF and Kimala Bennett, managing director of The Business

Lab) Mile Gully High School.

Additionally, the Best Business Facilitator was Camille Hutchinson from Mile Gully.

Chief judge Dr K’adamawe K,nIfe, in giving his overview of the presentations, explained that all the students gave very effective presentations and accounted themselves well.

“What these students showed was the idea did not have to be new, but it had to bring a solution to a problem,” Dr K,nIfe said.

And that was exactly what the overall winners Mile Gully did.

Mile Gully created a fruits and supplies entity to supply students with a nutritious breakfasts, of fruits and healthy sandwiches, before school begins.

Hutchinson said that although the business as school was hard work, the 25 students and three teachers will be ecstatic with the win.

“We operated our business for five months and made a profit of $89,000, even though we started with one bag of credited oranges,” she explained.

This ingenuity is one of the reasons that Bennett said she is extremely proud of the outcome of the programme.

“It was a great programme. It goes to show that entrepreneurship can taught to third and fourth formers, which is what we cater to,” Bennett said. “The programme pulls from all subject areas — be it math (for stock), accounting (checking and balancing the books); art, which includes branding — everything has to make sense,” she added.

Dr Renee Rattray, programme manager of MBSF, expressed that she is very proud of the growth in the students.

“What it has done is built pride in the students and the schools. Many of them will begin to think of how they can create business of their own,” Dr Rattray said.