Monday December 17th, the last class for 2018 and what an amazing day it was.
I asked the students to make a final product and present these on Monday the 17th. I wanted to give the students a chance to find their inner creativity. So they had to come up with a final assignment that could be used right away. The assignment was formulated as following: the final assignment should be something digital/ online that fits your (future) company. You are free to decide what that is or how you will interpret it. The reason for it having to be digital? In this day and age where everything is digital, I want them to take advantage. The final assignment had to fit their company and it would be even better if they made something that could be used right away. Other than it being digital it also had to be complete, f.e if they would use pictures and/or texts they had to make sure they considered intellectual property. It had to be something new, so something they didn’t already have. They were also asked to give a presentation, which had to have the following elements: an introduction of the themselves, their idea and a complete story behind the final product. They had a maximum of 5 minutes to give their presentation.
Compared to the first group I tried to be clearer in what I was expecting from them, without giving too much away or filling in the entire assignment. It came to my attention that the students were still unsure of what I was expecting from them. Students have become so used to getting all the details from the teachers for assignments they have to hand it. Therefore they’re used to not having to think for theirselves. Two weeks before the presentations, I sent them an in-depth email with guidelines and expectations, so they could finish their presentations on time. I was so impressed with the end result on Monday, I saw so many different final products some better than others, but very diverse: youtube tutorials, video’s explaining their product or service, animation videos, flyers, 2D and 3D designs of products, websites, logo’s and more. Seriously, I was so impressed and proud of my students. And this time I’m putting this fearless young lady in the spotlight, allow me to introduce Aisha Kromowitono.
The Surinamese Aisha, 23, is in her fourth and also last year of the program Facility Management, at The Hague University of Applied Science. In this last year, where she will graduate soon, she had the opportunity to choose two minors. She chose one minor that fitted her studies perfectly; Procurement Management and one minor that was completely outside of her comfort zone; Entrepreneurship Learning by doing.
Aisha’s story:
From an early age I always thought it was fun to do business and to help others, preferably in the fashion industry. While I made the decision to study something that wasn’t fashion related, I always stayed passionated about fashion. I -for a fact- knew I would do something that had to do with fashion. While attending the minor market I saw the minor entrepreneurship and thought: ‘This is what I want to do, this minor will teach me to be become an entrepreneur and it will push me to take that next step’. I chose this minor so I could learn to effectively start my own company.
The name of my company is: Aish. Fearless Fashion. We have fashionable clothes for an affordable price and we believe that people should have Less Fear and More Fashion. I used to be an insecure girl, I had a bigger size tand I was scared to fail. With my company I want to show people that they don’t have to be scared while wearing beautiful clothes. Be fearless while doing so and be proud of your purchase, even if it’s a bargain. I wanted my clothes to be less expensive than the big fashion chains. I grew up being a ‘sales hunter’ and knew like no other how it feels to buy “cheaper” clothes and still get lots of compliments from people.
And this is exactly what Aish. stands for. We are focussing on fearless women from the age 22 to 35, that have slightly less to spend, but are looking for exclusive items. We offer exclusivity by ordering a specific amount of items in a range of sizes. Once they're sold out these specific items will not be ordered anymore. We know that this will make women feel fearless since they scored an item not a lot of people have. And all this for “Less than €45”.
Currently all of our sales are through our Instagram and Facebook. We are looking to build a suitable website, but this will probably happen after I'm done with this minor. We're currently doing a pilot to see if our target group likes this idea and if this is the case we will definitely continue. Our vision is to implement sustainable and social aspects in the company, such as fair trade clothing, charity and giving our customers a behind the scene look in our company. We have so many different ideas and we’re looking forward to implementing these in the company.
Even-though I’m still studying, I really like being an entrepreneur. Whenever I’m working on Aish., it gives me so much positive energy.
After the presentations and a short 10-minute break, it was time to choose one winner. I made a pre-selection of 5 students with the most impressive presentations. I asked the students to choose one winner. Every student had 5 points to give away, they could divide their points by giving one point to every company or they could give all their points to one company or anything in between. I really wanted to involve the students in this process. After the winner was chosen we did a quick energizer. I’m still so surprised that some students are so sceptical when I tell them we’re doing an energizer. And those are always the ones that end up liking these energizers the most. As the end of the class was approaching it was time to do a quick feedback session. I made a timeline of all the classes they had this period and I asked them to write tips and tops of the minor (on every class separately). And based on the feedback I will improve my classes by changing up some assignments. Lots of students didn’t see the value of the reflecting session and it was more a burden to reflect for the millionth time. So in the next group I will get rid of this way of reflecting, since it’s already a prominent part in school. Also, the students told me that the energizer have to stay especially since all my classes are on Monday morning. Of course I will keep the energizers and I’m even thinking off starting the day with an energizer. Not sure if the students will hate me for it (since i’m making them be active from the get go) or love me for it (since it makes the start of the classes and even their week much more fun). That’s it for today’s blog.
I truly want to thank you for reading my last blog of 2018. When 2017 was coming to an end, I’d never in a million years imagined that I would be doing what I’m doing today. And that makes me think, what will 2019 bring? Bigger things? Even better things?
Once again, thank you so much for reading my blogs. If you’re celebrating Christmas I wish you a Merry Christmas. Enjoy the holidays and have a splendid new year.
If you have any recommendations or questions, please feel free to email me at renate@twenty6consultancy.com.
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