Students from Richardson Dees Primary School in Wallsend launched the Young Enterprise North East 2020 Vision campaign. (Left to right) Back row: YENE chief executive Catherine Marchant. Middle row: Carrie Donley, Zoe Tucker, Tabbitha Garratt. Bottom row: Ben Edgar and Ife Akinropo. STUDENTS from across the region have helped employers to ‘see clearly,’ by launching Young Enterprise North East’s (YENE) new ‘2020 Vision’ appeal donning giant sunglasses in the shape of ‘2020’.
The 2020 Vision is YENE’s latest call-to-action that aims to gain longer-term commitment from the business and education audience, which will offer the charity more sustainability as it now looks beyond the recession.
Students from Richardson Dees Primary School in Wallsend launched the campaign alongside YENE’s chief executive Catherine Marchant by wearing 2020 glasses. All students from the school have participated in some kind of Young Enterprise activity.
YENE chief executive Catherine Marchant said: “As the region looks beyond the recession, it is the next decade that will shape our economic success – innovation entrepreneurship and leadership will need to be at the forefront of business activity over the next 10 years. But our future leaders in the next 10 years are at school right now.
“As the region’s longest standing enterprise education provider, we now need to reach the education, business and youth audiences to inspire them to work together to be a stronger region by 2020 and we all need to see clearly the benefits of working together, which we will set out to show.”
YENE is now seeking to forge long-term relationships between businesses and schools working together to ensure a strong and thriving local economy in ten year’s time.
YENE hopes that the campaign will equip young people that are still at school now to have enterprising attitudes and work based skills for when they leave education and enter the working world within the next decade.
“By longer term business commitment we mean anything from implementing YENE volunteering programmes into a CSR plan, designating us as a chosen charity for the next 10 years or actually adopting a local school in your area – the benefits are massive, as these young people are indeed future workforces,” Catherine added.
As well as encouraging businesses to see why enterprise in schools is vital to the future of their business, the campaign aims to encourage more schools and teachers in the region to run YENE’s range of enterprise education programmes, and it will highlight to young people that enterprise is a cool and exciting career option.
Representatives from the business community that have already showed their long-term support to the cause include Procter and Gamble, which has supported YENE for 15 years, Dickinson Dees who has provided volunteers for the last six years and Accenture, who has just received the ‘Extreme Partner Award’ by Junior Achievement, the worldwide movement of which Young Enterprise is a member nation.
Regional Development Agency One NorthEast is supporting the campaign. Head of Business, Enterprise and Skills, Tim Pain said: “We share many of the priorities identified by Young Enterprise North East and are fully behind this vision.
“Inspiring the innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow, and providing conditions in which they can thrive, will create the new businesses and new jobs that will help our regional economy grow in a way that is both dynamic and sustainable.”
CBI North East regional director Sarah Green said: “Now more than ever is a critical time for young people to become involved in business. The CBI is working constantly to forge stronger links between business, schools, colleges and universities, and we recognise the need to nurture the commercial potential shown by our school and university leavers. By encouraging the development of talent and offering support and guidance, Young Enterprise North East is providing a springboard for the schoolchildren of today to become the business leaders of tomorrow.
The 2020 Vision programme will be of fundamental importance in stimulating interest in business among our young people, and in doing so, will help shape the economic success of our region in the years to come.”
For more information on Young Enterprise North East and its 2020 Vision visit: www.young-enterprise.org.uk.
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