In the middle of the image is a young Daniel Harrison, and a young Sukhraj Bahra (with Gurvinder Johal the
other member of our team on the left), holding up our certificates. This photo was taken in
2016, as our team ’Ewaste’ came second out of four-hundred teams at the Houses of
Parliament final in a national STEM competition called the Big Ideas programme.
Our idea was a bin that could record household and business food waste and provide

feedback loops about how food waste could be reduced. We came second out of four-
hundred teams at the Houses of Parliament final in a national STEM competition called the Big Ideas programme.

 

Coming second still irks us badly to this day, but it was through this programme that we
realised our ambitions to be entrepreneurs. The competition provided us with a platform to
think and dream of an idea that could help tackle a big sustainability challenge: food waste.

 

Since that competition, we have been obsessed with thinking about ideas; ideas that can
help expand our frontiers of knowledge and can help transform our societies.

 

The word ‘entrepreneur’ is a funny one, its origins lie in the word ‘entreprendre,’ which is a
French word meaning ‘undertake.’ To undertake something requires will, dedication,
resilience and our three Let’s Go Learning values, optimism, empathy, and courage; these
are values we believe in and every day strive to exhibit so that we can be innovative

entrepreneurs and also good, honest human beings who want to leave the world a better
place.

In 2016 we were focused on tackling food waste, which is something we want to return to in
the future. In 2023, as the pandemic has helped demonstrate, there is still inequality of
opportunity in our education system and across the world. There is no meritocracy. Your
geography often determines your destiny, instead of your ability, work ethic, aspiration, and
values determining what you achieve. Instead of an aspirational society, we have an
unequal society. We believe, just as we did about tackling food waste in 2016, that an
education system that hoards and does not release potential must be defeated.

 

Since 2016 the world feels as though it’s changed a lot. It seems as though it has become
more uncertain, more polarised, and more unequal, but I like to think that we haven’t
changed much since then. We are still the bright-eyed optimists who believe in humanity’s
capacity for progress and who believe that ideas can change the world.

 

And maybe we are still foolish enough to believe that the sky’s the limit.