Evan's bright spark idea wins a national award

A Ballybofey schoolboy has come up with a unique design for a  multi-sport boot cleaner that looks set to clean up!

As a result, Evan McCafferty has picked up the national Bright Spark Award in the prestigious Junior Entrepreneur Programme.

This year the sixth clasess at St Mary’s National School, Stranorlar completed the programme and worked in teams to come up with business ideas to bring to a Dragon’s Den.

They learned from workshops with local entrepreneurs Marty O’Reilly and Jenni Timony who talked about the importance of knowing your target audience, marketing, market research and product development.

After lots of work and effort, Evan’s Bootdoc business idea was chosen by a Dragon’s Den panel made up of local entrepreneurs and educators.

Bootdoc is an innovative boot cleaning solution for sports clubs and communities that utilizes an upcycled wheelie bin with a platform that a player can stand on while cleaning their boots using an electronic modified carper cleaner attached to a perforated pipe that sprays water evenly over the boot. 

Evan made the Bootdoc at home using materials he sourced himself and conducted market research with local sports clubs that showed that the demand for the product is there.

Having been selected to represent the school, Evan’s project was submitted to the national Junior Entrepreneur Project Bright Spark competition, and last week his project was selected out of 400 primary schools and 12,000 students as the winner of the Bright Spark award.

Evan and his classmates in St. Mary’s were delighted to receive the award and now he is looking to build on his prototype and develop his idea further. Keep an eye out for the Bootdoc!