Greenville is the name given to the town in a Go Green Get Green business plan competition the Atlantic Business Magazine launched last fall in collaboration with John Risley.
Two groups of Holland College students, one based in Alberton (Prince Edward Island) and the other in Charlottetown, were recently informed that their joint submission won top prize of $10,000 in the college/university level of the competition.
Teams of students at the junior high, senior high and college/university levels were encouraged to submit business plans on how, on a $10-million budget, this fictional town could win the title of Most Environmentally-Friendly Community in the World.
“Holland College is all about hands-on learning, and I think that was as close to a real-life simulation as possible,” said Dara Caseley, contest participant and student in the Business Administration Program in the college’s new Alberton Centre.
Lisa Finkle, instructor of the Business Administration program, said her class decided in September to enter the contest and paid a visit to the college’s new Centre for Applied Sciences and Technology building in Charlottetown “to try to get the (creative) juices flowing.”
Students in her program would have to write a business plan anyway. The Atlantic Business Magazine contest would give them the opportunity to write a plan as a group and possibly win a prize for their efforts.
The CAST visit led to a collaborative arrangement between the West Prince group and the students in the Energy Systems Engineering Technology program.
“Their area of study is all around green initiatives for buildings,” Finkle said. “Our area of study is around business plans – the finance end, the marketing end, the people end.”
A bio-gas plant to produce energy from plant and animal waste, a smart power grid coupled with incentives to encourage citizens to curb their energy consumption, and LED lighting throughout the convenient walking/biking trails were some of the initiatives built into the business plan.
“It was a good learning experience,” said West Prince student Aryelle Vandenberg. “Before, I had no idea what a business plan was.”
Students, she said, had to come up with ideas and then find out how to implement them.
“It was a big business plan. It took us two months or longer,” added classmate, Megan O’Halloran. Collaborating with a group of students on another campus added to the learning experience, suggested Spencer Rennie. “Even that is something you could use in the future.”
As part of their project submission, the students even came up with an environmentally-friendly marketing plan.
“We didn’t think we could have a ‘Go Green’ project and not advertise in the same manner,” Caseley explained.
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