Our Cambridge Technical business students have recently been working on their unit 14 coursework – managing a business event. This unit helps students to understand the role and skills of event planners and acquire valuable, practical experience in planning, running and reviewing a business event. This year, the students decided to choose a charity collection drive as their event and concentrate on collecting items such as clothing, food, toiletries, pet food, toys and books.

As part of the planning stage, at the beginning of December, over 100 business diploma students visited the BMW Head Office in Farnborough. The students worked alongside BMW employees to plan the logistics of running their event and design marketing materials. They were able to see that planning is essential if you are to run a successful event. They were also able to look at the things that might not go to plan and how to prevent them from happening. The day was fantastic and the BMW employees were really insightful as to what life is like working in a corporate environment. 

The following week, each of the groups hosted their charity collection drives. There was an eager atmosphere and each group far surpassed their expectations for donations. Whilst raising awareness of the social good that can happen when working together, several charities, both local and national, benefited from the student’s efforts including Step By Step, British Heart Foundation and Trussell Food Bank. The students will now go on to review their events and consider how they could improve their work.