Outstanding Achievement Award for young business star - 13/5/10

Published: 13 May, 2010

Plymouth College sixth former, Jessica Evans, has added yet another award to her growing collection of business plaudits.  The 18-year-old from Plympton has been awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award at the Devon Young Enterprise Awards, held at Crealy Adventure Park in Exeter.

The award comes on the back of winning three national business competitions in the last twelve months - Jessica was a member of Affinity, the Young Enterprise company that won the national event last year and she was in the Plymouth College teams that won Make Your Mark and Student Investor.  She was also runner-up in the national Apprentice Challenge.

Jessica had been invited to the Devon Young Enterprise Awards to give a talk about being part of Affinity, the company that launched and sold the innovative book of family-friendly walks, Prambles.

"I was really delighted to be presented with the award", said Jessica.  "I had no idea I was going to receive it - I just thought I was going there to give a talk.

"The experience of doing Young Enterprise and the other competitions has been invaluable - the knowledge and skills that I have gained along the way will stand me in good stead for the future.  With Young Enterprise in particular the whole team felt very passionate about the project.  To see the initial idea transform into an actual product really spurred us on and we are so proud to see Prambles at no. 6 on the book list in Waterstones.

 "Until a couple of years ago I wanted to go into medicine, which is why I didn't take Business and Economics as an A Level option.  But when I got involved in the business competitions as an after school activity I realised that this was the path I wanted to follow and I now plan to study Business Management at university."

Plymouth College Economics and Business Studies teacher, Jonathan Shields, was also presented with an award as the link teacher that worked with Affinity.  He is the driving force behind the school's continued success in national business competitions, supporting and motivating the teams every step of the way.  In the last decade Plymouth College has secured nine national business competition wins and 53 regional accolades.

"It is always a real pleasure to work with Jessica and the other students in the business competition teams", said Jonathan.  "We have had an incredibly successful year, which would not have happened without the commitment and determination of the very talented students involved.  This success reflects our public examination achievements, which has seen Plymouth College students come first in the country a number of times - last year our students filled the top four spots nationally in Edexcel's Economics and Business Studies A Level."

Next for Jessica is the Unbelievable Awards, which sees her shortlisted in the Unbelievable Woman in Business category.  The event takes place at Birmingham NEC in June.  She is also due to take her A Levels in Maths, Biology and Design Technology before taking a gap year working in business.

Photograph:  Jessica is pictured receiving her Outstanding Achievement Award from Plymouth Young Enterprise Chair, Joan Melville.