Pupils stop the traffic during global education campaign

Friday 28 November 2014

More than 700 school children from years 10 to 13 were among young people from 150 countries who took part in Global Entrepreneurship Week 2014 in November.

Tasked with the challenge of reducing road traffic and improving the health and well being of Islanders, the students were engaged in team-building and problem-solving events throughout the week.

The programme was overseen by Jersey Business, working alongside event organiser Will Carnegie from Hi5 and Jeremy Field from Careers Jersey.

Local business people and entrepreneurs came together to act as mentors, providing valuable support and direction to the students to help them succeed in their tasks which involved teamwork, planning, research, concept creation and presentations. Traffic engineers from Transport and Technical Services were on hand each day to answer questions and this year, a digital element was made possible through the loan of MiFis from Airtel Vodafone to any schools without a WiFi connection. The team from Motion Studios also helped the students to create animated logos to accompany their presentations. As a final piece of motivation, Sean Conway- the first person to swim from Land’s End to John O’Groats - delivered a motivational talk to all participants.

The traffic reduction solutions presented by students ranged from toll roads - with penalties for single car users - to an electric monorail powered by hydrostatic electricity generated by tidal power. There were also "Pedal Pennies", which could be accumulated and converted to healthy meal tokens and an intelligent app attached to a hire bike that would measure distance and fitness, awarding points that could be used by the cyclists in local shops.

Working against the clock, the students were required to present their final ideas and concepts to a Dragon’s Den-style panel made up of the business mentors.