The ESJA Award Ceremony and announcement of the Innovation Centre

The 1st ES JA Award Ceremony took place on the 31st May.  This celebration was to honour our students that worked endlessly this year to provide such amazing results!

On the 31^st May 2017 at 7.30 pm in our School Hall, marks the start of something will hope will continue for years to come.

The 1^st ESJA Award Ceremony took place.
Despite the exams sessions, most of our students took a brief rest to come to the award ceremony.  We were pleased to see our teams, their families and our special guests.
The event was organized to honour the participation of all our 13 teams, over 100 students in this year’s Junior Achievement programme.    The Junior Achievement Cyprus is a member of a global, non-profit organisation (Junior Achievement Worldwide) specialising in youth entrepreneurship education programmes.  The programme is equipped to provide students aged 15-18 with entrepreneurial, financial literacy and work readiness skills that would enable them to pursue successfully their economic future.

Dr. George Theocharides, opened the event followed by an inspirational speech by Mr. Andreas Papadopoulos.  Mr. Papadopoulos, is a graduate of The English School.  As a student he was always very active: a track athlete, an award  leader of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award and Head Boy.   Mr. Papadopoulos, studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge (First Class Honours) and subsequently worked for Unilever in the US in the food industry. While in the States, Mr. Papadopoulos attended the Wharton Business School in Philadelphia and graduated with an MBA in Finance. Since his return to Cyprus in 2002 he has worked at the Hellenic Bank, where he currently holds the position of Commercial Manager. His love for education and entrepreneurship led him to be a founding member and Chairman of Junior Achievement Cyprus. Mr. Papadopoulos is also an avid sailor and a keen photographer, with several publications and exhibitions about the beaches of Cyprus.
During the Award Ceremony five awards were presented:

1. The Best in Biz Award. 

Award that acknowledges that business is not just a conspiracy theory but it was good business for the Cypriot Market.  The award winners were BBQuick, Herb-it, Simple Finders.

2. The Team Spirit Award.

A successful business is about its people, each and every member.  As Phil Jackson said, “The strength of the team is each member.  The strength of each member is the team!”  The winning teams were caseit², Ancora, Bake-it Off

3. The Elite Award for Technology Innovation of the Year. 

Technology Innovation comprise of new products and process.  This contributes to significant technological changes of products and process.    The winning teams were Quickeat, Trace

4. The Award for Customer Focus

The orientation of an organization should be towards serving its clients’ needs.  The teams that accomplished this were Armonia, MULTIPLEX

5. The Award for Environment & Corporate Sustainability

Corporate sustainability is an approach that creates long-term stakeholder value by implementing a business strategy that includes taking into consideration every dimension of how a business operates in the social, environmental, cultural, and economic environment.  The winners were ChromA, GrowGreen, ReChen
 
Before closing the evening, the School announced the creation of an Innovation Centre at the school.

Our school provides rich and engaging educational experiences and challenges through both its academic programme and its Extra-Curricular activities clubs like the Junior Achievement Programme, F1 in Schools (STEM Technology), 4x4 Programme, Astronomy Club to name a few have become popular amongst our students. Due to the popularity of these clubs, as a school, we need to provide the conditions (venue) and technological support so they can feel challenged, inspired and creative in their response to real time problem solving activities, and this requires them to think out of the box, being innovative, and bringing together their knowledge acquisition and knowledge application and allowing their talents to flourish.  It is for this reason that we feel that a void in the educational system we offer to our students needs to be filled. The creation of an Innovation Centre has therefore become our priority.   We are very happy that the Board of Management has agreed to dedicate a space to create an Innovation Centre, however it is subject to finding the appropriate funding.
Being a non-profit organisation we request support from organisation and individuals to turn this vision to a reality. The innovation centre will consist of: seven rooms: Brain-storming meeting room, meeting room (including bathrooms), Kitchen, common-meeting area, Technical Club and Robotics Club workshop, F1 Track & Exhibition Centre.

The outside rooms will create room an Exhibition Room, Astronomy Club Storage, Photography & Social Media Room, the area will be paved with benches and kiosks and everything will be fenced to protect the equipment being stored.
This is a big project and we invite the public to support our efforts in providing our students with this invaluable educational experience. Any financial contribution can be regarded as supporting the motivation of research among the young, investing in education and in the future productive professionals of Cyprus.  

The evening closed a refreshments outside the hall. 

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