EcoRequiemVR Takes on The Finals

Six of our Year 10 students went to Plus X Innovation in Slough to compete in the Climate Change Conference Finals 2025. The competition was partnered by Orange Business, Equinox and Plus X innovation. Seven schools across Slough competeted after the iinitial stages which took place in Feburary-April. Each winning team was paired up with two industry advisors from leading companies to help and support the students perfect their pitches before the judges heard about their final idea.

The Westgate finalists were EcoRequIemVR whose area of focus was both climate and nature as they are interdependent of each other. The company focuses on both features, as climate change will affect all aspect of nature! They specifically wanted to focus on the issue of deforestation. Deforestation contributes about 20% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, so reducing it will be necessary to avoid dangerous climate change. The aim was to educate young people on the effects of deforestation through innovative technology and a social media campaign.

Eco Requiem VR targets young people, who are the future of international cooperation and policy, by providing educational VR experiences to educational settings such as schools, colleges and universities. We would provide the VR headsets and session planning to support schools to visually and interactively learn about the devastating effects of deforestation.

Their website will allow students, staff and people to access our company shop. They will also sell recyclable cardboard VR sets that you can use with your phone to access the same VR experience at home. They can connect to the technology through our APP. These sets are recyclable but will be made of sturdy double-sided cardboard and so they will last.

Their social media campaign will target young people through popular apps and sites such as Instagram, TIKTOK and YouTube. Our company has an Instagram page which you can follow @EcoRequiemsVR to promote our technology which you can see here or use our QR code to access on your phone. Additionally, through our links, people can book sessions, access our APP and also subscribe for the year to access our VR headsets. By subscribing, it allows schools to be able to use a booking system to book headsets which will be delivered to schools for the day. This allows schools to provide sessions to multiple year groups or during multiple sessions. This means it is more economically sustainable for schools which we believe will make our technology more accessible to all settings.

Their market research about our chosen demographic showed that our target market of young people would respond to this social media strategy. For example, our Youtube channel has 133,000 subscribers, which proves that young people can connect with education content and our aware of the climate crisis. We believe that this success would translate into a thriving and profitable business model.

During the day, students were able to meet with industry experts who were then able to give feedback on our ideas. EcoRequiem received a lot of positive feedback from industry experts such as that our idea was innovative, well resourced and easy to create. Products from across the school included waterproof AI robots that would clean up plastic in the oceans and drones that delivered healthy soil to regions suffering from drought, so the competition was fierce. Although we lost out to Beechwood, our idea was praised by many of the industry experts in the room and the entire experience was a positive and amazing lesson.