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Small businesses reap big rewards from campaign

Small businesses are being urged to sign up to the Young Enterprise North East (YENE) ‘One Day’ campaign after reports of the benefits that SMEs gain through working with the charity.

One of the campaign’s preliminary aims was to sign up a large amount of SMEs as well as bigger organisations, to show that any business large or small can be involved with helping the next generation of entrepreneurs in the region.

As the enterprise education charity comes to the end of the ‘business-case’ phase of its 18 month call to action campaign, it has announced that 62 businesses have signed up to the campaign, including 35 SMEs that have never worked with YENE previously.

Sole trader and rug and art creator Ingrid Wagner, signed up to the One Day campaign having no previous experience with the charity. She now offers school visits at her studio in Northumberland as well as job shadowing and has already spoken to young people in the classroom environment about the benefits of having enterprise education, and how to set up a business.

Ingrid said: “I signed up to the One Day campaign to give me a platform onto which I could help students realise that business skills are so important in this current climate. Traditionally artists find it hard to be creative whilst being good at business, my passion is to show young people that both can work together and making a business out of design can be achieved. Young Enterprise North East allows me to do this and the satisfaction that I get is tremendous.

“By nurturing talent whilst students are at school you are essentially nourishing your future workforce. That is why SMEs will really benefit from joining the One Day campaign and getting involved with young people.”

Other small businesses that have signed up to the One Day campaign include Explain Market Research, The Storage Place, SB Squared, Barkstow plastics and Guroo limited.

The next phase of the One Day campaign will be launched in September with the ‘youth aspiration message’, which will highlight several case studies of what young people have and can achieve from enterprise education lessons.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .