The winners of the 2009 Make Your Mark Enterprising Young Brits Awards were announced today (Tuesday 24 March 2009) at a very swanky ceremony at the Institute of Directors (IoD), London.
They were each presented with a trophy and £1,000 prize money by Chancellor Alistair Darling, who made time to chat to finalists and hear their positive stories.
This is, as you can probably tell from the use of capitals in the title, a very excited blog post.
Why you wonder? Well, not only has summer began (A girl can hope right?) but you can now vote for your favourite Enterprising Young Brit in the People Choice award! Hurrah!
The entrants this year are all pretty ace and amazing and by voting, you will be participating in patting them on the back while saying “Hey, you know what? I totally love what you’re doing with your business, you’re way cool and I want to play a part in shouting out about how great you are. I also really like your hair.” All figuratively of course.
I was lucky enough to attend the final for the Central and South East Asia Enterprise challenge yesterday – a British Council/Make your Mark collaboration following on from Global Entrepreneurship Week, involving thirty young people from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.
The event took place (appropriately!) at Shakespeare’s Globe. It was truly inspiring to see the participating young people, having been fired up by a GEW event taking forward their enthusiasm and coming up with tangible solutions to the problems faced by their communities.
It’s been in the news recently that Cadbury’s is going fair trade. So what does this mean for the business - does switching to fair trade (for Dairy Milk bars and its hot drinks range) make it a social enterprise?
Doing a bit of research, I learned that the fair trade initiative means Cadbury will now pay a guaranteed minimum price for Ghanaian cocoa, even if the open market price falls below it. Social enterprise is different, as companies like Divine show. Through Divine’s social enterprise model, farmers also share in the profits and are involved in decision making as well as being guaranteed a minimum price.
A hat from Girls Make Your Mark Award winner Pachacuti is featured on handbag.com and according to the site’s lifestyle editor Alaina has been doing really well in terms of web hits. Fab stuff! It’s great to see entrepreneurs competing for space with the bigger brands on top fashion sites like handbag. Who would you like to see on the site? Let us know and we’ll pass your top tips back to handbag.
Congratulations to Make Your Mark Ambassador Cyndi Rhoades, who has won two weeks’ free trading space as one of Make Your Mark in the Mall’s finalists.
Cyndi is the co-founder of Worn Again - recycled fashion made from materials like seat belts, post-Glastonbury tents, bicycle tires and parachutes. Their shoes and bags have been huge hits with dedicated followers of fashion and the media, and their ethos has really struck a chord with eco-conscious shoppers. Be amazed by just how great scrap fabrics and a fire hose can look by catching Worn Again in the Mall: Cyndi will be trading at Walthamstow Mall for two weeks from 16 March.
It’s Week Two of Tenner Month. Thousands of young people are using Tenner loans to make profit and social impact and so I thought I’d have a go myself…how hard can it be?
I love baking and so I’ve turned my hobby into an entrepreneurial opportunity. I invested a tenner in flour, sugar, eggs, butter and some pretty chocolate hearts.
I’ve made vanilla cupcakes and heart-shaped biscuits and I’m selling them to the Make Your Mark office. I hope to acheive a social impact by donating any profit to Community HEART, a UK-based charity combatting the legacy of apartheid in South Africa.
Well, nearly.
Tenner month is almost upon us - that’s when thousands of young people around the UK will be turning a ten pound loan from Make Your Mark into a profit. As if the profit wasn’t enough, they’ll also aim to have a positive social impact on their community or even the wider world. If like me you just can’t wait that long for the flurry of Tenner-related news, you might want to check out some Top Tenner Tips from our Make Your Mark Ambassadors. From transport, food, fashion and football, via roses and wheelbarrows, our Ambassadors have a wealth of weird and wonderful ideas to inspire you to take your Tenner further! It’s all in our Tenner toolkit.
Here at Make Your Mark HQ we had a fantastic meeting about Entreprenerurial Youth with members from the Youth Sector who are all really excited about the enterprise journey young people from the informal youth sector are about to embark on.
I asked them what they would do with a whole TENNER , you decide on the how enterprising our fellow grown ups ideas are on this magnificent Tenner Tuesday?
Here we go……
Social Enterprise West Midlands is running a trade fair for those looking to start or collaborate on social enterprise.
The social enterprise revolution starts on Tues 10th Feb at Centenary Square, Birmingham from 11:00 and what’s more is that it’s FREE: http://sewm.eventbrite.com
SEWM website: http://www.socialenterprisewm.org.uk
On Tuesday I got to thinking about money.
Aside from my usual hang wringing internal monologues of not having enough, not saving enough, not investing enough, my actual thought process was centred on enterprise. Probably because of Make Your Mark with a Tenner, which I consider (biased I may be) one the most interesting activities we are doing this year.
Like all the best concepts, Tenner is refreshingly simple. We loan young people a ten pound note then challenge to make as much return and/or be as socially responsible (which may or may not be intrinsic?) as possible within a month.
With the tenners being released into the hands of 200,000 young people across the UK very shortly, I ask myself how I would Make My Mark with a Tenner.
With a whole month to generate some hard CASH and young people with lots of spare time, I’m thinking multi sports+tournaments = Fun, competition and cash
By holding lunch time matches, afterschool activities and evening fun you could find someone to donate a few trophy’s and supply squash and orange quarters for refreshment breaks.
ooohh it’s sooo exciting can’t wait to see what our budding entrepreneurs can generate.
Maybe hear at HQ we could try a tournament in the office ?????
Hurrah!
Today marks the very first Tenner Tuesday, and here at Make Your Mark Towers we are giddy with excitement. Make Your Mark with a Tenner is a clever little beast. Young people up and down the country will be handed a crisp ten pound note and will aim to be as enterprising as possible with it. The competition kicks off proper in February, but from today you’ll be able to head over to our brand spanking new webby page to get your fill of Tenner news, resources and other cool stuff.
The only question is….What would you do with a Tenner?
In this blog I will briefly explain how if you give me £10, I can make the world a better place. With tea.
After watching a few Make Your Mark folk pondering just what they would do with a tenner, I started to ask myself the same question. How can you make a profit and a social impact with a tenner? Or, if you will, Make Your Mark with a Tenner?
I reckon what I would do is, I would have a tea party. I could probably get a cheap tea pot, some biscuits and some tea bags for a tenner. Everyone might have to bring their own mug – is that allowed?
It’s January which means there is less than a month to go until Make Your Mark With a Tenner kicks off. Up to 20,000 young people will be loaned a Tenner (yes that’s TEN pounds) and challenged to see how much profit and social impact they can make with it. With interest rates currently sitting at around 2% this project shows just how much more can be done with money when it’s not left sitting in a bank account. The money has been generously provided by the wonderful NESTA alongside Dragon Peter Jones and Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch.
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