In March 2017, students from Harrow College’s Digital and Creative Career College were given the opportunity to work on a live digital project – giving them hands on industry experience, while supporting a homelessness charity.
Their task was to develop an interactive solution for three books produced by The Roberts Centre - a charity for the homeless. The books help children to relate to issues such as debt, family break-up and homelessness.
Over the past 8 weeks, students from Harrow College as well as BMet and Barking & Dagenham College, have been busy working to a brief which included making some key financial decisions based on a virtual £60k budget (e.g. employee costs, materials, expenses etc.).
On 3rd May at the offices of AWS (Amazon Web Services), the teenagers presented their project plans to representatives from AWS, The Roberts Centre and the organiser of the project, Career Colleges Trust.
The students had to deal with every day work issues including team absences, working together as a new group and supporting one another to fill knowledge gaps - quite something for 17 year olds!
Despite narrowly missing out on winning the top prize, the team from Harrow College were all able to confidently present their solutions and demonstrate their understanding of the brief.
Digital Lead for the Career Colleges Trust, Julia Von Klonowski, said:
“All the students did a fantastic job and I was hugely proud of them all. Taking part in a live project with one of the world’s biggest digital companies has been an amazing opportunity for them.
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