The trust operates a foundation which provides scholarships and mentoring to under-privileged students wanting to pursue tertiary study. This year, Hi-Tech Trust trustee Sarah Ramsay, of Dunedin, suggested Ignite develop a marketing plan for promoting the scholarships and encouraging other firms to take on scholars themselves.
The trust’s board was in Dunedin yesterday and visited the Ignite team at the university, later attending the Ignite presentation evening at Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, which celebrated the achievements of this semester’s projects as well as marking its 15th year.
Founded to bridge the gap between the student community and not-for-profit sector, Ignite comprises students from various faculties across the university.
It runs on an eight-week model; each semester, 25 students are recruited and divided into five consulting teams. Each team addresses a brief that tackles a set of challenges identified by the individual organisations.
This semester, Ignite worked with five organisations: Pregnancy Help, the Otago Peninsula Trust, Hi-Tech Foundation, Taste Nature and the New Zealand Biodiversity Factor Tool.
The NZ Hi-Tech Foundation, an initiative of the New Zealand Hi-Tech Trust and Perpetual Guardian, is dedicated to fostering innovation and leadership among New Zealanders in the technology industry.
Mrs Ramsay, the chief executive of United Machinists, thought young, first-year students, who had recently made their study choices, would be the best people to figure out how to position the scholarships with secondary school pupils.
"Ignite worked on a project for me years ago when I had [marketing company] Immersion. I also acted as a mentor for several years and so they have a place in my heart. I think it’s really cool for them to work on a national-scale project ... and [it] will hopefully be great profile building for them," she said.
The trust also wanted to see greater diversity in tech from a regional perspective and so it would be great to see more engagement from Otago and Southland schools who were most likely not aware of the First Foundation or the scholarships offered through it, she said.
The students had been very engaged and the calibre of the report they had produced for the trust was far beyond what it was expecting. It had also been an "incredible opportunity" for the students to work first-hand with the trust’s impressive board of New Zealand business leaders, including Dunedin’s Sir Ian Taylor.
"I hope that through this project I can hook Ignite up with a number of other similar initiatives, including similar projects for the manufacturing sector."
