Pakora Party

With hopes of raising money for women's empowerment charity, Samosa Sisters, youngsters from Gateshead began their creative Key adventure.

Hamza, Iqra and Mahnoor are a sibling group who joined forces at Gateshead Youth Council to make a difference to a local charity. With their ultimate goal in mind the group got to thinking about how they could do just that. 

After coming up with tons of ideas, the group finally settled on opening their own micro-enterprise with all proceeds going to the Samosa Sisters. Their creative fundraising idea? Making, selling and delivering their own Pakoras!

The Pakora Party got to planning by searching the internet for all the ingredients, containers and food hygiene goods they'd need, setting their price and offer and drafting their adverts and flyers to spread the word. Armed with tons of information, a detailed budget and lots of passion for their project idea, the group headed to panel.

Panel Members and The Key were blown away by the detailed budget the Pakora Party produced. It had everything you could possibly imagine broken down including how many napkins they'd need, how many containers, aprons and disposable gloves they'd need and even how much cumin, spinach, garlic, chilli, mint, cream, yoghurt and all other ingredients they'd need. It was simply amazing! The group pitched their idea well and talked about all of the skills they'd so far developed, leaving no room for the panel to say anything but yes!

With a yes from panel, the sibling group of three youngsters got to working to set up their entrepreneurial home-made Pakora take-away scheme. They shopped, cooked, packaged, sold and delivered snack boxes of pakora to local business people and workers in Gateshead and Newcastle. In the process they developed key communication skills, improving their English speaking skills (which is not their first language) by speaking to customers and food providers, which also helped them to deal with people in power and authority better. Not only this but the group had to build their problem solving and negotiation skills after communicating to get the best deal and quality ingredients whilst keeping their costs as low as possible!

The project has already been a huge success and it's still going. If you're based in Newcastle and Gateshead then you can still order yourself and colleagues a selection box of 8 pakoras for just £3! With all money going to a good cause, you'd be silly not to get involved!

To order simply email valerie@gatesheadyouthcouncil.org.uk and check dates and availability.

Well done to Pakora Party! We can't wait to see your evaluation at the end of the project