Our Entrepreneurship Educator, Miss Anna Lee, reports thatÌýÌý- which helps high school students succeed in the business and innovation world through workshops, programs and pitch festivals -Ìýheld First Pitch, an age-inclusive national pitch competition. This has beenÌýexpanded to include the new under 12 and under 14 age categories whichÌý¼«Æ··´²îæ» entered with their four winning pitches from the inaugural Year 9 Pitch Afternoon:

smarTEND – a digital check-in system that simplifies the rollcall process in schools - with further applications in high-risk environments such as mining industry and job sites.

Helploma – a high school educational marketplace allowing students and teachers to buy and sell notes for all year groups, and a subscriptive model giving access to additional educational tools for self-driven learning.

IMperfect Clothing Co – a custom design clothing company that handmakes clothing to suit size and bodyshape for an inclusive teenage demographic for a fraction of the price.

JordAsh – 3D-printed custom-made mask accessory solutions for long-term comfortable mask-wearing, preventing fogging up of glasses and bad-smelling masks.

We’re excited that IMperfect Clothing Co and JordAsh also feature in the 30 round 2 national finalists for the Generation Entrepreneur National Pitch Competition (which runs until December) when the top ten teams will progress to the next finals round. They could potentially receive $1500 in funding and industry mentorship to grow their businesses. The Finder Innovation Fund has generously covered our competition fees.Ìý More information can be found .

As if that wasn’t enough, SmarTEND was judged alongside 21 other individual/team pitches across WA in the under 14s age bracket, ultimately becoming overall State Winners. They received $1000 to put towards further development of the technology behind their solution and advanced to the live Zoom national finals held on the evening of Wednesday 27 October, where they competed against the other states, with an additional $1000 up for grabs. While our Carmel entrepreneurs didn’t win this competition, they did incredibly well to get as far as they did. In fact, one of the observers said our team’s presentation was the best of the evening. Mazal Tov to our entrepreneurs! This was yet another opportunity to hone their pitching skills and they are coming on in leaps and bounds.

We look forward to seeing our teams’ continuing successes in the coming months.