Venturists

Venturists

At the Academy at St James we have worked alongside Participate and created a group called the Venturists. This project encourages social enterprise and you can find a link here to how the project works:

https://participateprojects.org.uk/the-venturists/

Our Year 4,5 and 6 pupils have worked alongside Jill Taylor and a wide range of organisations.

We are entering this because this we believe that working with social enterprise and supporting young people to achieve their dreams is essential in providing a broad and balanced curriculum

We wanted our pupils to aim high and live out our school values of aspire, achieve and believe. The Venturists is a unique project designed for primary schools, in particular 9 to 11 year olds, and gives young people the opportunity to start viable social action programmes.

The project enables ‘Our Venturists’ to understand and explore issues in their community and what they might do to help. Our Venturists then plan their project, accessing the tools and resources needed to bring their idea to life; and to deliver a project that makes a real impact.

We have worked with a wide range of community partners including: Morrisons, Inn Churches, Provident and a number of registered charities. We feel this project has showed the best of our children and given them the opportunity to become citizens who can contribute to their community.

We feel that the project is unique for the following reasons

1.We follow the children’s interests and this gives them independence and ownership

We have been brave in our decision making as it incorporates a whole range of themes which will support young people growing up.
We provide real life experiences and the children work alongside a wide range of organisations from the world of work to understand that nothing is impossible.

At St James we have our 5 ways of being which are: show that you care, always be yourself, be a confident communicator, become a knowledgable and expert learner and contribute to your community. The Venturists ethos sits alongside our core values and is at the heart of what we do.

The project has seen our children plan ideas, research solutions and possible problems and then design and implement their plans. They have created and produced products which have been showcased to others and have been evaluated and presented.

The pupils present their ideas to a Dragons Den of judges from local businesses and then have the opportunity to present there ending to the project to the whole school and guest speakers from businesses across the district which include:

Inn Churches
Provident
Morrisons
Participate

Give Bradford

As a school leader, this is one of the best projects I have been involved in and I feel deserves to nominated for this award. It has changed the lives of our children, helped them aim high and encouraged them to achieve their dreams. As one child said: ” I want to help other people in the future, I know I can now make a difference”