SOME of Belfast’s most creative young entrepreneurs are bidding to design a new charity fundraising product.
Four student teams have been shortlisted to pitch their ideas to a panel as part of Belfast City Council’s Make It to Market challenge, which was open to all third level education students in the city.
The product from the winning team of students will then go into production and be sold in the UK to raise money for Ten Foundations, a Northern Ireland-based charity working to help homeless children living in the Philippines through the building of 10 orphanages.
The four finalists of the competition are Synergy; Mini E-Co; CreSives — three student teams who attend Belfast Metropolitan College — and Ee-law, a student team from Queen’s University Synergy hope to produce a soap called Sarwia, using materials such as coconut oil and palm oil, and scented with Filipino flowers.
It will be produced under Fair-trade working conditions and for every bar of soap purchased in the UK, the Ten Foundations charity will donate a bar of soap to the Philippines.
Mini E-Co are aiming to produce a range of toys called Tipis that will be made in the Philip-pines and sold in the UK as colourful, easy-to-assemble inter-active children’s play areas.
The toys will also be used as a child’s educational tool in the Philip-pines.
Team CreaSives hope to design a contemporary range of jewellery re-using plastic bags discarded as waste in the Philippines.
The process of making the jewellery will involve sterilising the bags and manipulating the plastic to create colourful pieces of jewellery.
Meanwhile, Ee-law aim to produce a range of outdoor lighting made from hand-woven bamboo and various other up-cycled materials.
This would be transported back to the UK to be sold, but could also be distributed in rural Philip-pines. If customers purchase a pack of four bamboo lights in the UK, this would generate profit to donate a solar lamp to a family in the Philippines.
The Make it to Market programme is funded by Belfast City Council, Invest NI and the European Regional Development Fund under the Sustainable Competitiveness Programme for Northern Ireland.
Councillor Deirdre Hargey, chair of Belfast City Council’s development committee, said: The importance of good business planning, healthy competition and promoting a business idea effectively is something they will endeavour through the challenge, similar to a real-life experience of running a business.”