The seventh-annual Dragons' Den Challenge was held at Diamond Jenness Secondary School on Dec. 5, and once again the entrepreneurial spirit of young people was on full display.
Eight pitches were made to a panel of three Hay River businesspeople in the format of the long-running CBC television program Dragons' Den.
When the dust had settled from the pitches, Ginny Boden and Gina Lenoir had won the junior division for Grades 4-6 with their idea called Tiny Terrariums, and as a result were awarded $500 from Dragons' Den Challenge sponsor the Rotary Club of Hay River Sunrise.
Boden, who was the first home-schooled student to compete in the challenge, and Lenoir, who lives in Enterprise and attends Ecole Boreale, won over the panel of three dragons.
"Tiny Terrariums is a company to take any kind of nature any place, any where," said Boden. "By that we mean, you can take Tiny Terrariums in a little bottle, in a necklace, any place."
The winner in the senior division for Grades 7-9 and also a recipient of $500 from the Rotary Club was Shayla Moore, a Grade 8 student at Ecole Boreale, for her business idea to help elders with homecare support services.
"My payment would be by donation because the elders don't have much money," said Moore, who presented the only entry in the senior division.
This year's panel of dragons was made up of April Glaicar, a jewellery maker and mixed-media artist; Lee Cawson, vice-president of the Aurora Group of Companies; and Brian Lefebvre, the owner of Power Surge Technologies Ltd.
Glaicar praised all the students.
"We just had a really tough time in there trying to make a decision on all of these fantastic pitches," she said.
In addition to the grand prizes, the dragons themselves supported two business ideas.
They gave $200 to Rylee Robillard and Miah Harris to help with their business idea called Crazy Knitting Chicks, which features knitted products.
They also gave $175 to a team of five students from Ecole Boreale to help develop a board game called Battles of the Black Hole!
The team consisted of Grayson Groenewegen, Hunter Groenewegen, Michael Skelhorn, Elie Lepage and Mateo Lafferty.
Lefebvre noted he has been a judge for the Dragons' Den Challenge a few times and he is always impressed by the ideas from the young entrepreneurs.
"You can only wonder what goes through their minds as they're creating these ideas and bringing them forward as a potential business opportunity," he said.
The pitches for Dragons' Den Challenge could be either theoretical or a business idea that the young people actually plan to create.
The Rotary Club of Hay River Sunrise came up with the idea for the Dragons' Den Challenge and has been hosting it since 2011.