A sweet opportunity

Students from Barking & Dagenham College had the opportunity to be mentored by Hotel Chocolat’s Chairman last week.

The students are taking part in a project called Your Horizon, which gives them the opportunity to network with mentors and visit the Old Mutual Bank for workshops. They got support with their CV-building and discussed their business ideas with mentors from industry.

The Chairman of Hotel Chocolat and co-founder of Lush Andrew Gerrie gave them an inspirational speech and then watched students pitched their business ideas.

The activity was part of a scheme run by the charity Your Horizon which aims to help young people with the transition from College to working life. The programme gives students the opportunity to build key employability skills with students supported to take their next step by expert business volunteers.

Their tutor Adnan Mahmood said: “It was an excellent experience for them. They had recently taken part in an enterprise project which involved them selling products at Romford market. At this event, the students got to talk with Hotel Chocolat’s Chairman Andrew Gerrie about their experience of selling on the market stalls and what they learnt and what they would do better next time.”