Partner Article

Budding young entrepreneurs need better support

Young people face significant barriers to becoming their own boss, despite entrepreneurship being the number one career choice for 14-30-year olds. The research was published by the Make Your Mark campaign, which aims to encourage an entrepreneurial culture among young people.

The report argues that many young people face ‘significant barriers in translating their ideas into reality because they don’t have access to appropriate support’. The Make Your Mark campaign is now calling for more innovative support programmes involving entrepreneurs, mentors, and the media to help young people realise their business goals.

Peter Grigg of the Make Your Mark campaign said: “There is a big gap between those who aspire to run their own businesses and those that actually do. This market is overlooked by traditional forms of business support and some young people are falling off the ‘cliff edge’ after education.

“We believe that peer-to-peer support programmes, mentors and realistic role models are a more effective means of reaching and supporting a larger number of young people; current business support models could be re-engineered to utilise these more customer-focussed tools.”

The report recommended a bridging of the gap between enterprise education and business support through new relationships between education business links and business support services.

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