As part of Year 13 Enrichment Programme, Portadown College participated in the YENI Company Programme 2009/10 and set up “Impact”.   

The students who were involved gained first-hand practical experience of business and enterprise through setting up and running their own real company.  Every week, during a designated study period, the students held a meeting with the support of a volunteer from business. The Business Advisor for the year was Michael Rentmeister from Mesh Technology Ltd.  Mesh Technology is an Information Technology (IT) Services company based in Lurgan and Belfast which provides IT services throughout the province. 

November, December and January were particularly busy months for the students as they raised share capital to finance the company.

On Thursday 12 November 2009, 13 members of the School’s Young Enterprise Group, along with Mrs Hutchinson and Mr Grant, attended the Northern Bank Entrepreneurship Master Class at Armagh City Hotel.

After a welcome from the Lord Mayor, the students engaged in various team working sessions with pupils from other schools.  One of the sessions involved the pupils writing a business plan for an established business that wanted to safeguard its performance from the ‘credit crunch’.  The pupils decided on how they would spend their loan and created marketing material to promote the business.  There were four representatives from Portadown College on the winning team who produced the best business plan overall.  The pupils were Sam Cheung, Ethan Rathore, Sarah Banks and Judith Martin.

The event came to an end with a motivational talk from Billy Dixon, Image Consultant.  This was an extremely enjoyable talk and finished off a very worthwhile day.

Memory pens are still available to buy and the company will be posting new marketing material for the forthcoming academic year 2010/11. 

Pens can be purchased from any of the following people:

Sam Cheung, Diana Milligan, Judith Martin, Sarah Banks, Nathan Heyburn, Jordan Watson, Andrew Poole, Aurimé Ribaciauskaite, Grace Irwin, Ethan Rathore, Andrew Slaine or Mrs Hutchinson.