Major national award for Tullamore College team

A team from Tullamore College has been announced as the winner of the first I Wish Stripe Entrepreneurship Programme.

Muireann Coyne, Bláithín Clarke and Sinead Ryan were announced as the winners in front of an audience of over 15,000 on Tuesday. They were awarded €5,000 to support the further development of their project idea.

The programme is designed to ignite creative thinking, give teenage girls the skills and confidence to develop their business ideas, and lay the groundwork for more female-founded businesses. Five groups of female students worked with mentors from Stripe over a three-month period, building an initial idea into a business proposal that was presented to judges in a Dragon’s Den style pitch.

I Wish is a social enterprise inspiring teenage girls globally to consider careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). This week it hosted more than 15,000 teenage girls from Ireland and across the world for the 9th annual I Wish STEM Showcase hybrid event, including an in-person audience of some 3,000 teenage girls. Female students attending on the day have the opportunity to engage with over 60 influential STEM role models.

A Students’ Voices session featured former President of Ireland Mary Robinson in an interview with Sarah Bryant, environmentalist and climate change activist. Mrs Robinson answered questions submitted by students from schools around the country.

During the interview, Mrs Robinson said: “I want to say how pleased I am to be back with I Wish. I’m a great fan of girl power, in fact I’ve seen it in action in the young girl climate activists all over Ireland, some of them I’ve come to know quite well and they are all giving a lot to leadership, so I really feel today is an important opportunity for you to realise your power.”

STEM entrepreneurs and co-founders of payments start-up Xelda, India Healy O’Connor and Portia Healy O’Connor also gave a headline address at the I Wish STEM Showcase event. The I Wish STEM event may be viewed by visiting www.iwish.ie/

Caroline O’Driscoll, co-founder of I Wish commented: “Today is about two things. It’s about giving girls access to inspiring female role models in STEM and showing the girls what it's like to work in STEM, and we do that in our exhibition zone. We have some amazing exhibitions like 3D printing, cyber security, how to design an antigen test. It’s such a fantastic opportunity for girls to learn more about this fast growing area.”

John Collison, co-founder of Stripe, said: “Studying maths and learning how to code opens up a whole world of opportunity. You could play a crucial role in solving generational challenges like climate change, responding to the next pandemic, expanding economic opportunity, and much more. Inspiring more young women to pursue careers in these fields—and better yet start their own businesses–is one of the most obvious ways to accelerate progress. Stripe’s entrepreneurship programme with I Wish is a small part of this effort, and I’d encourage any female students who like solving problems to have a crack!”