Two entrepreneurial young high school students from Jaipur, India - Tilak Badaya and Ashok Ramani – received a glimpse into what the life of an international student living on the Gold Coast would be like when they spent a week on campus at Bond University recently.
The Seedling Public School students won the trip to Bond through the Advance to Australia Short Film Competition (A2Oz), with their video on ‘Social Entrepreneurship’ judged best in show by Bond’s Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Dr Baden U’ren.
Cambridge English Language Assessment and the Australian Trade Commission ran the video competition across schools in India, giving students the chance to demonstrate their English skills and creativity by producing a three-minute video.
The 'social entrepreneurship' category of the event, which was sponsored by Bond’s Business School (BBS), attracted entries from more than 400 entries from leading international and public schools across India.
This was the student’s first trip to Australia, so in addition to making themselves familiar with Bond University and everything it had to offer, they were also kept busy getting a feel for what it would be like to be a student living on the Gold Coast, with trips to Sea World, Currumbin Birdlife Sanctuary and Surfers Paradise Beach just a few of the social activities they enjoyed.
The students said there were many highlights of their week spent at Bond University, and were particularly impressed by Bond’s world class facilities, in particular the award-winning Abedian School of Architecture and Institute of Sustainable Development buildings, the new 2,700 sqm Sports Centre, and Bond Business School’s Macquarie Trading Room, which boasts 40 Bloomberg terminals, the most of any university in Australia.
The young Social Entrepreneurs were very excited by Bond’s Entrepreneurship program and the buzzing vibe of it HQ - the Bond Business Commercialisation Centre - which is home to the university’s incubator program for early stage start-ups, Bond Business Accelerator (BBA).
Another highlight for the students was being able to experience Bond’s annual Twilight Open Day on 23 July, where they heard from last year’s Winner of BBA, entrepreneur Navdeep Pasricha, who gave a talk on his start-up, iYouth, and how the program had helped bring his idea to life.
Both Tilak and Ashok also enjoyed their visit to the ‘Level Up Lab’ in Bond’s Faculty of Society & Design, where they had the chance to get ‘hands on’ with the many games and apps created by Bond’s talented interactive media and design students.
“The Career Development Centre session was amazing too,” said Tilak.
“We looked at our journey, interests, strengths and goals and then mapped them against the courses and programs we could study and the type of jobs we could get as a result.”
The two students are very keen to travel and study once they complete high school.
“After our experiences this week and at the University’s annual Open Day, we would really love to come to study at Bond next year!” said Ashok.