The Young Eyes Festival and Entrepreneurial Program – Delivering our future generations entrepreneurial skills and a festival to showcase and compete for their idea, concept or business annually.

our future is in the hands of the youth of today.

entrepreneurial focused learning

What is the young eyes festival of innovation?

The Young Eyes Festival of Innovation originated as an initiative of Zig Zag Hub – a coworking conglomerate dedicated to meeting the needs of start-ups. Advances in technology, changes in the nature of work and the number of aspiring young innovators with the desire to create and instigate change, established an organic demand for entrepreneurial learning. The Young Eyes Festival of Innovation emerged to fill such void, through entrepreneurial education in schools.

The Young Eyes Festival of Innovation remains the keynote event staged by the Young Eyes Team, where rising stars from the Illawarra, South Coast and beyond, are presented with the opportunity and necessary support to bring their change making ideas to reality.

How does the festival work?

Each year the festival commences with an in school, online learning program, where students are guided through idea formulation, market research, product differentiation and pitching. Learning is facilitated by the Young Eyes online learning platform, with the assistance of the classroom teacher, who is supported by the Young Eyes Team every step of the way.

Each participating school is then provided with Young Eyes resources to host their own ‘Shark Tank’ where students have 90 seconds to convince their teachers and judges of the merits of their business ideas and/or capacity to instigate change.

School finalists are then selected to progress to the Young Eyes Festival of Innovation semi-finals, in which they submit their pitch via video for judging by the Young Eyes Industry ‘Sharks’. Chosen finalists are then invited to pitch live at the Young Eyes Festival of Innovation, where rising stars are spotlighted alongside established entrepreneurs with winners named in the following categories.

‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’

‘Young Innovator of the Year’

‘Young Global Advocator of the Year’

Why Join Young Eyes?

The festival combines the best of entrepreneurial education with inspirational and motivational speakers, entrepreneurial success stories and pitching from our school finalists with winners receiving cash prizes and networking and mentoring opportunities.

The festival provides a real-world opportunity for students to apply their core curriculum knowledge in Mathematics, English, Science and Humanities while replicating the entrepreneurial journey in a safe, structured and supportive environment, where mistakes are beautiful, problems are solvable, and anything is possible!

testimonials

“The program was excellent and involved students planning, designing, creating initiatives and ideas to make a product. They then designed a marketing strategy and finally pitched the idea to a number of business people. The real benefits for the students was the improved confidence and sense of self when preparing to pitch their ideas. Students really enjoyed the program and learnt a lot. I would highly recommend this program and any program like it.”

“It was a privilege to have Zig Zag Hub run entrepreneur programs for a group of students from years 9, 10 and 11. I was thrilled with the response from the students and loved watching them think innovatively and solve real life business problems. Both parents and students gave positive feedback on the program .”