Charity that gives students a taste of business

Young Enterprise, the charity which encourages children to become entrepreneurs, will soon establish 110 companies in schools and colleges across the region.

As Janet Brumby, the charity’s senior team manager, is keen to point out, young entrepreneurs can blossom in some of Britain’s most deprived neighbourhoods.

For more than 20 years, she has helped hundreds of young people in Hull to learn more about business.

Mrs Brumby, who picked up the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2006, believes that great companies can be born in the depths of recession.

Young Enterprise companies are real businesses formed and run by students. Over a year, the students will work as a team to raise finance, carry out market research, and develop a product or service.

Mrs Brumby added: “We give the people in those Young Enterprise companies a hands-on real experience of running a business.

“Rather than work for someone else, they might, from an early age, think about starting their own business.

“The school buys into Young Enterprise and pays for the programme. They allow up to 25 young people to form a company. It’s outside lessons, so they’re giving up their own time. We assign them one or two business advisers from the local business community.

“We work to help them set up their company from scratch, with a board of directors, memorandum and articles, bank account and shares.”

The Young Enterprise programmes have a variety of prices, and benefit from enthusiastic support from local mentors.

Mrs Brumby added: “As a registered charity we have to cover our costs.

“Schools pay into the programme, but we try to find ways of subsidising those costs whenever we can, which is where local businesses can get involved.

“Any money that those young people make at the end of the year is theirs to keep.”

The success of BBC TV’s Young Apprentice, which features a group of budding tycoons who are put through their paces by Lord Sugar, has also stimulated interest in Young Enterprise and its work in the region.

Ms Brumby added: “The people on the Young Apprentice are very much like some of the young entrepreneurs that we have.

“They’re all glued to the show every week.

“I’ve started to take calls from young people who have found Young Enterprise after looking us up on Google.

“A couple of years ago there was a company called Force-7 (based in Hull), who were set up by Young Enterprise, and they’ve just turned over their first million pounds.

“They’re an interesting company in that they didn’t make a product; they provide a service. They are a youth communication and marketing agency, who use modern social networking tools.

“A lot of universities have a very active entrepreneurial side to them. If a student is doing engineering or fashion they can still run a company on the side in their own time.”

Young Enterprise runs programmes for primary school pupils as young as four, to help them gain a glimpse of the world of work.

Many companies have flourished after a disastrous start.

Mrs Brumby said: “I particularly remember a company called KH Smilers.

“It was set up by a group of Year 10 students from Kelvin Hall school in Hull, who were only 14 at the time.

“They started a company running Christmas decorations. They had a terrible time and lost all their share capital.

“But they turned the company around by using an old polytunnel that one of their dads had in the garden and they started making hanging baskets.

“All three of them went on to medical school. They were clever boys and very entrepreneurial as well.

“When they went to university, their dads ran their business in their absence.

“I’m hoping that Young Enterprise keeps on growing and growing. In North Halifax Grammar School, for example, we’ve got seven or eight young enterprise companies in one school.

“They really do want their children to be enterprising and employable. I’d like every school to be like them.”