Pathways to Success

Image: Pathways to Primary team by Tim Cuff.

This is a story of a project that ended up a decisive yes, despite starting as a definite no. Last year’s regional winners of the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES), Pathways to Primary, had a great idea, grant funding and plenty of enthusiasm. The Pathways team, you could say, were on the right pathway. Unfortunately, their initial business venture involved holding an event where large numbers of people would congregate - not as ‘on trend’ in 2020 compared to the previous few million years of human existence.

Lockdown, and a need to abandon the event cost the team time and motivation, the brilliance of a second great (tech) idea was also reluctantly let go due to time constraints. The highs and lows they all felt through those early months the students now see as good experience.

Year 13 CEO Bree Anderson explains, “It sounds very cliché but our never giving up mind sets was something we learnt and can take away with us. It really has built determination into all of us and proves why it is important to keep pushing through even in tough times.”

Luckily the team’s third idea turned out to be the charm. The Pathways to Primary card game is similar to Top Trumps. Players compare categories such as pay levels and training involved with the ultimate purpose of the card game to raise awareness of horticultural career opportunities amongst college students still deciding their futures.

Says Bree, “We worked alongside Go Hort[iculture] and they said they don’t know what works, or what it’s like anymore [to create something that appeals to students] so that’s what was different for us. We’d been through the education system recently so we know what kids like and what they don’t.“

The YES programme requires the teams to not just come up with a business idea but to promote and sell their product, and crucially, pitch the concept to judges. The team have since sold over 500 packs of their cards around the country, as well as the rights to the game itself.

“We didn’t have an idea at the start of the year but I guess that was the whole point of it. To make you grow as a person and learn to work as a team. It gives you real life experience. It is totally different to NCEA and prepares you to what life could be like out of school."

Their mentor, Robyn Patterson from Go Horticulture, was so impressed with the team’s business that her organisation became an initial sponsor and then bought the rights to the card game.

“They identified a real need for an interactive horticulture career tool, and created such a good product, in demand by schools.”

She says working with the Pathway to Primary YES students was the highlight of her year.

In addition to winning the regionals, the team has also won a national excellence award. There were fourteen excellence award categories and the Pathways to Primary team was one out of 514 teams in the country to enter. They won the National Te Arahanga Primary Industries Award. MPI felt this team ticked all the boxes and saw that this card game had a positive impact on young people, introducing students to roles they had not considered before that would hopefully lead them onto a rewarding career. Any way you look at it, that’s pretty good going for your third shot at a business idea.

The Nelson Tasman Chamber of Commerce organises YES for Te Tauihu, seeing mentoring entrepreneurs of the future as all part and parcel of the responsibility for an organisation like NTCC. The programme’s success is also heavily reliant on the support of local business people who provide wise counsel and support for the students as they develop their fledgling companies into, in this case, award winners.