The Wedding of the Week

The final evening saw us truly celebrate in style!!!

We had Nicola Chegwidden an NFYFC member taking on the role of Wedding Planner come and lead the final evening. She introduced the activity for the evening. A Wedding!!!! The participants then had to pick a role from the cards in her hands. Each participant was given a role ...... I was Chief Bridesmaid. We had to host a hen do before the wedding, then hold the wedding ceremony, and finally had the reception where the kitchen served roast beef!!!

The reception then continued long into the night!!!

It was such a great idea as it enabled dressing up, fun and giggles to be prevalent!!!

It was pretty much an all nighter for most (apart from the prep team) as the first of our participants had to leave the venue at 3.30am to go to the airport to catch their flight home :(

Day 7 - The Final Day

I cannot believe this came around so soon!!

The final day saw the participants have to pull on all their learnings from the week. They had to prepare and present a business plan for a business they know about, or one they would like to start. They could work by themselves or in groups of max 3 people.

They had the whole morning to prepare for their presentations. The groups were fantastic with some great ideas. The business ideas were so wide and varied. Ella even presented on her own clothing business that she is in the process of starting up.

The presentations that were presented to the group were of a really high standard. They had taken on board the learnings from the whole week and had become business minded individuals. The terminology used showed a good understanding.

The afternoon session saw the evaluation by the whole group. I was blown away by how much everyone had felt that they got out of the week. The majority said that it had exceeded their expectations and that they had all learnt what they had expected to learn and more.

There were times during the week when it felt that maybe we had packed too much into the seminar but it was all in their to provide them with as much knowledge and experience as possible.

Malvern Fashion Show

In the evening we had Worcestershire Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs members come and run an evening of entertainment for the participants. Local members from a few different clubs turned up at the venue equipt with many different activities to entertain the masses.

One of the funniest had to be the main group activity where the group had bin bags and had to make a costume for a member of their group. The dressed up member then had to parade the outfit down the catwalk with another member explaining the idea behind the outfit. This was very amusing and caused much laughter!!

Later on in the eve they continued to play some common games that they would normally play on a night out! It was fair to say the following the day the participants were still talking about the eve and laughing when looking back on the pics!!

Day 6 - Escaping the Venue

Today we got to escape the venue properly without any "work" to be done!! We walked down to the train station at Malvern Link first thing in the morning and caught the train to Worcester. The weather had yet again held for us and the morning sun was stunning. As we walked down the hill we could see for miles.

We arrived in Worcester and none of us being local it was a mini adventure for everyone!! Including the prep team!! Our first and only activity in Worcester was a tour of the Cathedral. The Cathedral was really interesting and our tour guide was good fun too! We were shown all different areas of the Cathedral and were able to ask all the questions we wanted to.

After the Cathedral tour we had free time in Worcester to have a good look around the city before needing to meet back at the train station.

Once back to Malvern Link, some participants caught the minibus back to the venue and others chose to walk back up. It was really nice to get some fresh air and exercise!!

Once back at the venue late afternoon we welcomed two more entrepreneurs to the venue to speak to the participants. Again no need for the participants to take any notes...... but the two entrepreneurs were going to speak on their experiences as they were from very different business's than the previous three we had seen.

The 2 speakers were Nick Hands from Malvern Outdoor elements (the venue) and John Hardman who has multiple businesses in different sectors. Aswell as being an Executive Director for Hops Labour Solutions (a business owned by NFYFC) and he is NFYFC Treasurer.

The two speakers were like chalk and cheese which really gave the participants something to think about, and they were coming up with some brilliant questions!!! One question even silenced John for a couple of seconds!!

All in all the participants got alot from both speakers and were impressed by both for very different reasons. They were still comparing them the following morning during the next workshop!

Day 5 - The Dragons Den

The day i have most been looking forward too!! The business owners from yesterday visit the seminar venue today and get to act out a Dragons Den style panel for the participants.

The participants are being grouped together and given a real problem to solve from one of the business. They will have most of the day to work on solutions to the problems and then will get 10 minutes to present their findings to the business's (Panel).

The participants were feeling nervous as they were working with real problems and real life situations for these businesses. I wanted to make the scenario as real as possible as it gives value to the time spent on the project as it could potentially be used in the future.

The businesses were quite nervous too as to what the participants might suggest or present about their business.

The presentations were incredibly well thought out and the business owners seemed suitably impressed by the hard work, thought and effort that they had put in. all solutions presented had been well considered and the participants had drawn on their learnings from earlier in the week.

All in all a successful day.

Day 4 - Out on the road

Today saw us actually leave the venue for the first time since the participants arrived. Myself Gareth and Julia (a guest visitor for the day) went and collected 3 mini buses in the morning to allow us to transport everyone around for the day.

Once all in the mini buses we went on a day trip around Herefordshire taking in the stunning rural scenery (when they weren't asleep!!) and visiting in particular 3 business's.

The three business's we visited were - Hopes of Longtown, White Haywood Restaurant and Wiggly Wigglers. The aim of the visits were for the participants to learn more about each individual business as they would be working on some problems for them the following day.

The day was incredibly interesting with each business being very different and having very different problems for the next day to solve.

Lunchtime was at White Haywood restaurant where we were served delicious produce that had been produced on the farm.

I again have pictures to upload of our visit which i hope to do very soon

Traditional Folk Dancing with Morris Men

The evening of Day 3 saw us be entertained by the local Morris Men!! They wore their traditional dress and performed for all of us a few dances. They even brought their own live band to entertain us with live music :)

They then taught us all some basic moves and we put them together to form a dance. The atmosphere they created with their live music was immense and the main leader of the group was so enthusiastic and entertaining that he got a lot from everyone who participated.

It very quickly became apparent who was coordinated and had timings within different groups and who was lacking these skills!!! Joe from Ireland was just one participant that i can name who had a few directional problems with one of the moves...... but he certainly made up for it in enthusiasm! Karl from England was certainly enjoying it and getting into the full swing of it all. (Video to follow)

The Morris Men then stayed and socialised which allowed the participants to ask them lots of questions and to learn the history behind their group.

I look forward to posting the videos soon :)

Day 3 - Innovative Entrepreneurship

Wow what an interesting and informative day on site at Malvern.

I was leading the first session of the day with Russ entitled Entrepreneur Profiling. It seemed to go really well as session and the participants were interacting well with each other and the topic.
As part of the session they had an entrepreneur to research and feedback on key facts to the group. One group fed back through role play which was fantastic to watch.
I was really surprised that many of the participants didn't know who Alan Sugar is?!!!

Next session of the day we moved on into Business Planning which Chris kindly led. It was a brilliantly thought out session that again had plenty of interaction. The participants were fully involved and were constantly working in different groups for each task so had the opportunity to build relationships with each other.
We were very pleased to welcome Georgina and Simon from the Natwest RBS Group who helped the participants with their tasks that had been set. They were there to answer any questions and to give their professional feedback.
The participants were very complimentary of Chris at this evenings feedback groups. They really enjoyed the session and liked the way he presented it, especially the way he made them feel comfortable with the topic area.

The last session of the day was a Social Media session led by the Social Media Guru Lynsey Sweales CEO of SocialB (@SocialBuk).  I was really looking forward to this session along with most of the participants.
Lynsey did not disappoint!! She had a really hard task as i gave her a large range of areas that we wanted to cover in the session.
The participants were really surprised about how much they learnt and picked up from the session. The majority of the participants use Social Media, mainly Facebook & Twitter, to communicate with a wider audience so they had a good common grounding. Apart from Enda who does not have a Facebook profile!!

Lynsey showed the group how important a media plan can be to a business and showed how using social media, in particular getting the keywords correct, can make a big difference to how successful your profile can become.

The feedback from todays sessions was positive with many learning a couple of key points in each session. The participants had a long day in the classroom, but it will be worth it as the learnings today will help with tasks later on in the week.

Pictures from our European Feast!!

Day 2 - International Buffet: A Taste of Europe

Last night we held an international buffet at Malvern for all the participants and prep team to enjoy. Gaz and Russ went and laid out the tables with banquet roll in preparation for the participants to bring their food & drink to display and share with everyone.

Myself and Kadri went and collected plates, bowls, cutlery and the glasses to enable participants to sample every country's produce.

The tables took about half an hour to be set up and there was soooo much food!! But it looked really colourful and smelt really good.

At the start of the evening each country introduced what they brought and explained a reason as to why they had picked it. After all the introductions were done the music started and everyone could mingle and have a taste of the fantastic food and drink that was on offer. It really was a taste of Europe!   

Earlier in the day Kadri had also set up a music playlist for the evening so during the buffet we had some songs played from each country. The music then led into some traditional dancing by some countries that was fantastic to watch and experience.

The evening seemed to be a huge success and everyone went to bed full of various European offerings!

Day 2 - The seminar is actually happening!!

Wow what a start to the second day!!

For breakfast we had pancakes this morning which was a nice change from a fry up. We specifically placed pancakes as the choice for Sunday morning as we have an Estonian prep team member and in Estonia its traditional to have pancakes on a Sunday for breakfast.

Once fed and watered we had a formal introduction from Nick the owner of Malvern Outdoor Elements (the venue where we are staying) followed by an introduction by The Chairman of Rural Youth Europe Kadri.

For me it was strange as after all the planning for this event the prep team were now delivering the sessions and it was all very real! It is actually happening!

The rest of the morning was spent with the prep team facilitating different sessions including a presentation on their youth organisation & an introduction to a local business to them.

During some of the morning I was busy on the laptop printing paperwork for our funders as we have a visit on wed so it needs to be correct.

The afternoon was amazing as the groups went on a teambuilding session at the outdoor education centre where they went up a quad pole, solved problems and had a lot of fun!

The participants had a great time and for some they learnt new skills.

Many pictures to be up loaded tomorrow!!!

Day One Autumn Seminar

Day one for me started at 7am this morning to go to the airport to meet the first 3 participants for the seminar.
I then sat in on the NFYFC Youth Forum meeting that we hosted on site today.

By 8pm this eve we had all participants on site and they were registered and settled in. They then had tasks to complete a presentation and start to create their blogs.

Ice breaking games this eve were fun, with everyone getting to know each other.

Looking forward to tomorrow when we get to do some team building activities at the centre here at Malvern Outdoor Elements Centre!

Really enjoyed the first day! A bonus ..... everyone arrived safely!!!

Seminar Title:     Inspiring Change - Transforming Communities through Innovation & Entrepreneurship


The prep team have had a great planning day at Malvern Outdoor Elements today preparing for the Autumn Seminar which officially starts tomorrow!!

We have put together all the participant packs and done the accommodation plans.

We are looking forward to welcoming 29 participants from 14 different European Countries to Malvern, England.

Over the week we will be visiting different businesses within Herefordshire to learn more about their experiences and we will be visiting Worcester for a tour of the Cathedral.

Bring on tomorrow!!