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EPC donates £3000 to help fund Aberdeen School’s charity challenge

STAFF at EPC Offshore have donated £3000 to St Josephs Primary in Aberdeen to support their WildHearts Micro-Tyco charity challenge, which helps people in the developing world work their own way out of poverty.

Instead of giving out donations to needy causes, WildHearts give out loans so that people in impoverished countries can set up their own businesses.

Brainchild of social entrepreneur Mick Jackson, Micro-Tyco challenges teams from schools, colleges and businesses to grow £1 seed capital into as much money as possible in one month.

This unique business competition attracted 550 teams from across Scotland and raised over £90,000 for the developing world. Remarkably, St Joseph's came first in the educational category beating all the Universities, Colleges and Secondary schools in Scotland for generating £9527 in just one month.

The aim of the challenge is to help participants of all ages discover their own entrepreneurial skills, while turning them into "global ethical investors".

All the money created from Micro-Tyco will be invested to help poor people in 20 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The average micro loan is £150. It is repaid and recycled three times a year, transforming an average of seven lives and pulling over 100 people out of poverty every five years.

Keith Wallace, CEO of EPC Offshore said: “We were delighted to support St Joseph’s charity challenge. Micro-Tyco is a fun, fast and educational new enterprise challenge to benefit a great cause. It’s also a great way to encourage team building and help stimulate enterprise education in the classroom. The pupils from St Joseph’s Primary have amazed us with their hard work and determination.”

The Micro-Tyco challenge not only helps students discover the power of multiplication but also inspires collaborative partnerships between local companies. In this case, a group of pupils from St Joseph’s co-presented to EPC and Aberdeen-based Oil & Gas consultancy Exceed, who made an additional £2,000 contribution to the fund. Ian Mills, Managing Director of Exceed said: “St Joseph’s primary school was the outright winner in the class of educational institutions, coming second only to Deloitte. That’s a tremendous achievement for a small school with only 276 pupils. We’re very proud of these young entrepreneurs.”

Sonia Mills, teacher at St Joseph's Primary School, said: "From the beginning of Micro-Tyco, the children were inspired by the WildHearts vision. The fact that by discovering their own talents and creating wealth they could help others engaged everyone who took part. The competition element made it fun, exciting and through Micro-Tyco we've built lasting partnerships with our business community. It is vital we inspire the next generation and it was so exciting to be competing side by side with pupils from across Scotland."

WildHearts founder Mick Jackson added:

“Micro-Tyco’s unique combination of inspiration, world class business mentorship and ethics has produced incredible results once again. There is such untapped business talent in Scotland and WildHearts is committed to nurturing it. One of Micro-Tyco’s key goals is to bring our society together and collectively raise the bar of what’s possible, the astounding results delivered by St Joseph’s Primary School and and all the other schools across Scotland are an inspiration to us all.”

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