Pitch for Change Goes National

Hundreds of young people had the opportunity to pitch their ideas for positive change to a panel of business and community leaders with the chance of winning up to £500 to help deliver their projects or extend the reach of their projects.

Pitch 4 Change events took place in Birmingham, Leeds and London and saw nearly £8,000 awarded to 20 Envision School Teams. All the projects being pitched to the panels aimed to make some kind of environmental or social impact on their schools or wider community. The 20 teams that took part in Pitch 4 Change were shortlisted from around 200 Envision School Team projects currently taking place around the country. The projects included ideas such as a bike to school scheme, a memorial garden for war veterans, a clean up of local community areas and events to raise awareness of issues such as body image, water conservation and gang crime.

Each team had 15 minutes to pitch their ideas followed by 15 minutes of questions from the panel of business and community leaders. The young people came well prepared and were able to demonstrate the short term and long term impacts of their projects as well as give further details about their budgets and marketing plans.

The panels featured a superb line up of industry experts from the business and public sector and included representatives from Severn Trent Water, Burberry, Packt Publishing, Business in the Community, EDF Energy and Shared Earth.

The students stood up well to the grilling from the panels and not only won signifcant funding for their projects but also pledges of personal and professional support from the panel members.

If you'd like to read more about the individual projects and see photos of the events go to our Pitch 4 Change page.