MONTHS of work were celebrated at a glittering ceremony for young entre-preneurs in Bournemouth.

The Daily Echo has been following the Enterprise Challenge programme since it began in October.

Run by Enterprise and Skills and sponsored by Bournemouth University, it has seen 120 students from Bournemouth School, Bourn-emouth School for Girls, Ferndown Upper School, The Bishop of Winchester Academy, Wimborne’s Queen Eliz-abeth, St Edwards and Park-stone Grammar Schools.

Between them, they founded 11 real businesses and all of them made it to the end of the programme.

Each group was sponsored by a business, which mentored the students each week.

Abbey Life Assurance, Lloyds Banking Group, Rawlins Davy, Castlepoint, Hamworthy Heating, Hum-phries Kirk, Quostar, Warmer Homes and Hugh Symons all participated.

To mark the end of the project, 278 guests filled the Premier Inn at Bournemouth to watch presentations from each of the 11 groups, followed by the awarding of 25 trophies, sponsored by businesses from the area.

The top two awards were the Bournemouth University company of the year and the Johnson Stalbridge student of the year.

The student of the year gong went to Wenmaio Yu from Bournemouth School for Girls, who also scooped best managing director for her group, Coralero.

The BU company of the year went to Vici, whose MD was Josie Klein. It was advised by Martin Davies of Rawlins Davy and two former students, Phoebe Cornes and Clary Blackmore, with the group based at Abbey Life Assurance.

Chairman of the judging panel, Jonathan Clark, who is executive chairman of Bright Blue Day, said the standard was “very high”.

“My fellow judges and I found it very difficult to find the winners, however Vici was an outstanding company with good leadership, excellent teamwork and a sound business so a very deserving winner,” he added.

Chief executive of Enterprise and Skills, Karen Arnold, said that even though this was her 16th presentation night, she was still “amazed at the high calibre of students every year”.