As the process of forming the Cloudy Foundation charity takes shape, we are excited to report our first virtual school engagement project.
With thanks to sponsors, the William Harding Foundation and Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity, we have brought the challenge to last year’s App-Prentice Challenge winning school, The Aylesbury Vale Academy (AVA). This time, putting the digital marketing skills of a class of Year 9 Computer Studies students to the test over the course of three classroom sessions, delivered “virtually”.
Our programme has been facilitated in partnership with Study Higher, Buckingham Enterprise & Innovation Unit at the University of Buckingham, and Buckinghamshire Skills Hub. But with the new online approach and heavy focus on social media marketing needed for this year’s challenge, we have also been delighted to welcome Stefan Wesley, CEO of Sigma Digital and founder of the Digital Commando Academy, and student mentor and AVA Enterprise Adviser, Matthias Feist, to our team.
The Sponsor’s Aims 
Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity will be creating a Rainbow outside Stoke Mandeville Hospital in spring 2021 as a mark of commemoration for our amazing National Health Service (NHS) and the inspiring community spirit sparked across Aylesbury by the impact of Covid-19.
The Rainbow structure will be a brightly coloured arch comprising tiles that signify people’s donations to the fundraising appeal for the Hospice and Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust, priced at £20 per tile minimum donation.
Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity will see the first Rainbow Day take place on 3 December 2020, marking the start of an annual campaign to encourage people to wear rainbow colours as part of the fundraising.
Thereafter, Rainbow Days will take place at the Hospital and at schools all over Buckinghamshire, in a bid to not only help raise money but to also inspire community engagement from people of all ages, especially young people, across the county.
The Student’s Task 
The students of AVA were asked to come up with a digital marketing campaign that conceptualised a focus for Rainbow Days and the digital marketing campaign to promote their idea.
Working in teams, the task has been for the students to develop their campaign idea with the support of technical business experts and managing all their outputs digitally, online, using Microsoft Teams.
And after only two classroom sessions, and whatever they could in their own time, the students pitched their proposal in a short presentation to their peers and the panel of judges on the third class visit from the businesses.
And the Winner Is…
The students came up with some exciting and well-thought-out ideas employing a variety of interpersonal and technical business skills to reach their goal.
As part of the judging panel, Assistant Principal of AVA, Alastair West, later remarked:
“The students were very engaged in the task you had set them and it was such an important experience for them to gain.”
The judges’ chosen winning concept was a creative digital campaign based around the idea of conducting a Great Aylesbury Bake Off, which was particularly noted for the consideration given to engaging the wider community through social media, and with a hook that people were familiar with.
Taking it to the next level
The next step will see the winning team build a soft-launch digital campaign at their school with the help of CloudyIT, Sigma Digital and Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity for it to be given real-world application that officially launches Rainbow Days from 3 December 2020.
Community engagement
The launch of Rainbow Days through AVA celebrates the start of the charity fundraising appeal for the Rainbow installation at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
To donate support to this worthwhile charity, visit: fnhospice.digitickets.co.uk
Next steps of the competition
This AVA project marks the first of three “virtual” school engagement projects in Aylesbury, as Mandeville School and The Grange will join AVA for their own challenges linked to this Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity fundraiser over the next couple of months.
All three schools will go on to compete to be awarded for the best digital marketing campaign (where the level of funds raised will be factored into the success) for an overall winning concept to be chosen in Q1 2021.
Then, as a final reward, the winning students will have exclusive access to work with CloudyIT to develop the selected campaign concept for real-world application through a work experience project over Spring Half Term 2021.
That final “boot camp” will give the students experience of further tech skills training and employer engagement as they work with CloudyIT, Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity, and other project stakeholders, to officially launch their digital campaign to the public in support of the imminent Rainbow being built.
Join us
Businesses, charities, schools and students are invited to join our Cloudy Foundation Enterprise Academy on new projects to continue building this award-winning community engagement programme.
Please register your interest at: cloudygroup.co.uk/enterprise-academy
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