As we draw to the end of another cycle of the HSBC X DM Future Skills High Impact Project, mentor Anthony has written a final update in celebration of its huge success!
Following on from Anthony's brilliant mid-term update, here's an overview of the rest of the content covered in the second half of term...
Week 4:
Having focussed only on debating until now, Week 4 saw students start to explore personal finance skills. Students explored what a 'budget' was and were introduced to more complex terms such as 'micro economics', which provoked lively discussion!
This new content was then combined with the content covered in the first few weeks during an exciting debate. In particular, students were encouraged to use rebuttal and Points of Information to respond to the arguments of their peers thoughtfully and strategically.
Week 5:
In Week 5, students learned how to pitch an idea professionally, using the pitching structure employed by our colleagues at Debate Mate Limited when leading corporate communication sessions:
Setting the Scene: Identifying important issues to solve and capturing the attention of the audience.
The Idea: What is your idea and how do you want to present it? How much will it cost to achieve your goals?
The Detail: Reasons why this is a good, useful and important idea.
Why this & why now?: An emotive plea that engages the audience and wins them over to your idea!
Students used this structure to pitch a new piece of technology, centred around either climate change, education or communication, to fictional company Better Tech.
In Club Ruby, students predominantly focused on climate change with an emphasis on sustainability and sustainable business strategies whilst making profit.
Week 6:
In the final week of this Debate Mate x HSBC collaboration we held our final debate! Students were keen to participate and put the skills they had learned on this course into practice! From PEEL and Now-Action-Then to ACED and rebuttal, students worked hard to have a productive, lively debate.
During this session, students debated the motion:
'This House believes that environmental sustainability is more important than profit'.
One student on side Opposition made the powerful point that, "without profit, how can we work towards a sustainable future? Sometimes you have to make sacrifices now to ensure a safe future."
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As a whole, the final three weeks of this HSBC course saw students make great strides in both their debating and financial literacy skills! I for one am extremely proud of the hard work all our students put in throughout the entirety of this course and can't wait to see what they achieve next!
