Dragons spotted in South Dublin!
As part of the Innovation Dublin week, South Dublin Innovates proudly presented a take on the popular Dragon’s Den TV series except this time the contestants were children from local schools who pitched ideas for the development of their local communities.
The ‘dragons’ for the day consisted of;
- the Mayor of South Dublin County, Mick Duff,
- SDCC County Manager, Joe Horan,
- Nicola Mountford of the Synergy Centre, Institute of Technology Tallaght Dublin,
- and Máiread NicGabhann, a past member of Comhairle na nÓg.
The location of the event or ‘den’ was the South Dublin County Council chamber and parents, teachers, and fellow students crammed into the available space to support their teams.
In keeping with the theme of innovation week the ideas which the children pitched needed to be new, realistic, financially viable, creative and most of all, innovative.
The event which had ideas being pitched from seven different teams was a huge success. Every one of the teams had brought in projects that were very informed and applicable to the current youth population of South Dublin. So what ideas did these budding social innovators and community entrepreneurs think would impress our dragons? The day produced such varied proposals as a new skate park in Tallaght, and a youth disco, and social facility in Whitechurch.
And the winner is…….
The winning group was the team representing Jobstown Community School, who proposed a skate park for their community. It was a well deserved win, as not only was their project highly researched knowing where they wanted it, about local CCTV, etc, but they had also drawn up plans and CGI of what the park would look like.
