A group from Portlaoise CBS have been named the winners of the Laois Student Enterprise Awards for 2021.
Colm Byrne, Adam Ramsbottom and Aaron Dooley are the TY students behind O’Glo – a company who make handcrafted candle holders.
Under the guidance of teacher Deirdre Moore, the lads designed beautiful creations which fought off fierce competition at today’s virtual event – and were named winners by judges Niall Kelly, Bernie Everard and Patricia Frayne.
Aaron hails from Portlaoise with Adam and Colm both coming from Ratheniska – and Adam is the younger brother of Marc Ramsbottom who was part of the hugely successful Hurlstandz team that won national glory in 2019.
They will now go forward to represent Laois at the national finals later this year.
Second place went to Decor Nation of Scoil Chriost Ri with third place going to Illuminate of Portlaoise College.
The Junior Category winner was M-Pouch of Portlaoise CBS while Best Video went to Go Go Gum of Portlaoise College.
Best Team Spirit went to Isolation Decoration of Clonaslee while Smart Moves of Mountrath CS won the Best Product category.
The Innovation Award went to Mag Vis of Heywood, Voca Vibes of Scoil Chriost Ri won the Best Commercial Potential Award while Virtu-Train, also of Scoil Chriost Ri, won the Creative Business Video category.
Students from seven secondary schools around Laois participated in this year’s event – Scoil Chriost Ri, Portlaoise College, Heywood Community School, St Mary’s CBS, Mountrath Community School, Dunamase College and Clonaslee College.
The Student Enterprise Programme is the biggest enterprise competition for students in Ireland and is run by the Local Enterprise Office.
Typically, the finals would be held in the Midlands Park Hotel with judges visiting each group before announcing their winners.
But due to Covid, things had to be decided virtually this year.
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