Tomorrow's digital innovators

Helping the young people gain the experience, knowledge and skills they need to succeed is incredibly important to me. Fortunately, I had the pleasure to do just this, taking part in the 2022 BIMA Digital Day competition as part of TPXimpact’s community action initiative.

BIMA Digital Day provides 11-16 year old students with the opportunity to meet digital experts and compete in a sponsored, nationwide digital challenge for a chance to win £500 cash for their school and prizes. BIMA was looking for people to support with an event at Watford Boys School and help with creating challenges for the students. Me and three TPXimpact colleagues thought this sounded like a great opportunity to use our digital skills and make a positive impact on students' lives. So we jumped at the opportunity.

Passion and creative thinking

For our Digital Day, where we worked with a range of students aged between 13-16 who were split into different groups. We came prepared with two challenges for them to take on, focused on sustainability and improving products and processes. Both tasks were based on real-world digital projects, one with Primark and another with Royal Mail. Me and my colleagues were there to guide the teams and provide support, with each of them presenting their ideas at the end of the day.

What immediately struck us when watching the students take on their challenges was the energy they showed. Each team took to their tasks immediately, working together and engaging with their projects throughout. As people who ourselves are very passionate about what we do, seeing them filled with so much energy was a real joy for us. 

At the same time, their creativity and ability to think innovatively when it came to problem solving was hugely impressive. Being able to think laterally and deal with challenges in a non-linear way are key skills when working on digital projects. To see students demonstrating these abilities filled me with confidence that they have bright futures. It also even taught me a thing or two about new ways of approaching different tasks. 

After a day of teamwork, mentoring and problem solving, the students presented their solutions to us, each of which were excellent and made it a tough task to choose a winner.

Helping students reach their full potential

Me and my colleagues left with a massive sense of fulfilment. As someone who considered a career in teaching and has two children, working with these students and helping them develop skills that they can take with them throughout their working lives gave me enormous satisfaction.

I also realised how important events like this are. It’s rare that young people have the opportunity to learn about things like digital projects or user-centred, agile, and multidisciplinary approaches. The Digital Day provides this opportunity to them, helping to equip young people with real-world skills that may be vital to their futures. 

In summary, we had a fantastic time at the BIMA Digital Day and hope the students did too. I would recommend to anyone who is interested in helping young people reach their full potential to get involved with this or similar events. 

TPXimpact also looks forward to supporting BIMA Digital Day 2023.