Make Your Mark Blog

On Thursday 16th November while the glorious sunshine was beaming down on to Leeds City Centre, representatives from around the Yorkshire and Humber region met to hear about Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009. This great event took place in the prestigious surroundings 3 Albion Place, the headquarters of the Institute of Directors in Leeds. Partners discussed their plans for creating high impact events across the region.

On 8th July the flagship event for Shine Week, Talent Matters was full of inspiring people from all walks of life entrepreneurs, engineers, sport who all gave thier persepctives on talent. Make Your Mark supported this event and our very own Fat lemon boys were there long with our winners of the Ideas MashUp competition for further education students.

These were the words of inspiration they gave to the young talented people in the room

Cath Kidston ” it’s better to try and fail than not to try at all ”

The National Railway Museum was the perfect venue for the Club meet-up in York on Wednesday 15th July due to the highly entrepreneurial background that lies beneath the free-entry museum.

The day was crammed full of activities encouraging students from several schools to engage with one another, create new ideas and to showcase the business ventures they had embarked on this year. After having delved into a range of games such as networking bingo and play your cards right, the student’s entrepreneurial skills were well-warmed by the time they had to set present their projects at the Meet-up Market.

Last Friday was my first clubs meet-up and what a fantastic time I had. The kids where excited and VERY energetic …. getting me tired just thinking about it.

They came in with such a gusto to express their creative flare and also to share about the projects they have been working on. Projects to numerous to remember, sorry I mean to mention but I’ll name two since you asked so nicely.

I have had a fab week and that’s because I got to meet some of the enterprise groups which are part of the Make Your Mark Club!

On Friday 10 July, the Make Your Mark Club team were at The Studio, in Birmingham hosting a Club Meet-up for some of our budding entrepreneurial students. Enterprise groups from around the Midlands came together to shout about the enterprise work they have been doing this year and wow, they’ve been busy! Students involved have been making and selling crafts, raising over £3,000 for Comic Relief, planning trips to New York, putting on themed days at schools and running activity days.

The acheivements of the Lowestoft Energy Challenge were celebrated in a grand way last Friday 10th July at OrbisEnergy in Lowestoft.

The work completed over the past 18 months by students from Poplars Primary School, Denes High School and Lowestoft College was highlighted by student presentations, guest speakers, and film footage.

The Lowestoft Energy Challenge was a project set up and run by Make Your Mark and NESTA. The project brief involved students setting themselves up as energy consultants - looking at ways in which their schools or college could use less energy and save money on energy bills. Following enterprise training, trips, and guest speakers into schools the students from the three establishments made a bid for money in April 2008 to fund their own sustainable energy projects.

So, if you haven’t seen already, this week’s big story (across the world) is Matthew Robson, 15 (and seven months), who was interning at Morgan Stanley and wrote a report on digital media that was published by the bank. Here is a selection of the news on Google -

I’ve been on a tour around the UK over the past few weeks to help our fabulous panel of judges find the most enterprising place in Britain (or rather the UK) and as always the nominees are as diverse as they are geographically disparate.

Here at Make Your Mark we’ve been working closely with the BBC on Village SoS (www.bbc.co.uk/villagesos/) so I’ve been particularly keen to see what is being done in rural locations to tackle the enterprise challenge.

It’s Shine Week folks! That means that thousands of young people in schools across the country are shining a light on their talents. Yay!
As part of the week’s celebrations it has been a joy and a privilege to attend the National Finals of the Young Enterprise Innovation Awards . The brightest and best 16-19 year olds from the Young Enterprise Company Programme of 2008-9 showcased their businesses. The young finalists (one team from each region) were articulate and hungry for success. They had each achieved an enormous amount to make it to the National Final. They made presentations and faced questions from a panel of judges, in front of a huge and supportive audience. The businesses ranged from Blue Moon (Woodbridge School in Sussex) who had made the most of their artistic and business talents by creating a range of beautiful bird boxes, to Eclectic (Oxford High School in…erm…Oxford!) who created a multilingual children’s book and landed a publishing deal in China – a great example of going Global!
Well it was a lovely shiny event! The people I encountered were beaming with pride at the business acumen of these teenagers and there was a consensus that all of the finalist teams did tremendously well. The event was an occasion to celebrate the diversity of talent that can be harnessed by young enterprising people. That’s what Shine Week is all about.

This month world-renowned academic Zoltan Acs came into Make Your Mark to discuss his ideas about entrepreneurship - the interview is available on our website - HERE.

There are two things he says, in particular, that I think you might disagree with -

1) Entrepreneurship is only for middle class people, not for poor people

2) We shouldn’t encourage entrepreneurship - only high growth entrepreneurship

What he says makes me feel uneasy. Firstly, I think that in many ways he’s right. Why should we encourage entrepreneurship as a panacea for disadvantage?

So sad to see Coffee Republic to go into administration this week, let’s hope they find some buyers. At least one of our Ambassadors cites them as the inspiration for setting up her business, so it just shows that even good and inspiring business people don’t neccessarily last for ever (at least in their current guise - true entrepreneurs will bounce back!).

Do you think there are too many coffee shops on the high street, what innovative business ideas could use their shops and replace them on the high street?

Jane attends the Hull Enterprise Academy Launch Event

Last Friday 3rd July Jane Walton - Head of Region for Yorkshire and the Humber attended the fabulous launch of Hull’s Enterprise Academy. The Enterprise Academy was officially opened by Regional Minister, Rosie Winterton.

Global Entrepreneurship Week Yorkshire and the Humber Planning and Networking Lunch

Thursday 16th July
1pm – 3pm
3 Albion Place, Leeds, LS1 6JL

You are invited to attend the Yorkshire and the Humber Global Entrepreneurship networking and planning meeting.

Global Entrepreneurship Week (16th - 22nd November 2009) is a worldwide movement of entrepreneurial people with millions unleashing their ideas and turning them into reality.

Come along and find out how you can get involved, share your ideas on how to run and support events and help to ensure that Yorkshire and the Humber is the most enterprising place!

On Friday 3rd July the great and the good of Lowestoft came together to celebrate NWES being hailed the East of England Enterprising Britain Winner.

As part of the official national judging day, Maurice Helfgott CEO of Amery Capital and former Executive Director of Marks & Spencer visited the town to find out about the enterprising work that NWES have done in the last few years and judge whether Lowestoft and NWES is the most enterprising place in Britain.

Dave (20) caught the business bug in Year 10 when he took part in the Young Enterprise Company Programme where students gain practical experience of business through setting up and running their own company. Dave set up KH Smilers with fellow students Benn Jessney and Mike Jones, growing and selling plants to corporate clients. His father Andrew Garbera is also on the payroll.