Make Your Mark At Enterprise Week

Over the years Enterprise Week, which takes place this week (12-17 November) has evolved into a vibrant celebration of enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit aimed at young people.  This year is no exception with over 5,100 events registered to take place around the country.  [The Enterprise Week website appears to have been down for most of this morning, but will hopefully be active by the time your read this] Website up and running fine now.

At the heart of this year’s events will be the the Make Your Mark challenge where over 38,000 young people in 7,000 teams in schools around the country will take part in the same entrepreneurial challenge.

Tomorrow will see the announcement of the Enterprising Young Brits awards.  If you want to vote for your favourite young entrepreneur, then you have until mid-day on 13th November to vote.

Wednesday is designated as Women’s Enterprise Day and Thursday will be Social Enterprise Day.  Indeed, SmallBizPod is hoping to include coverage of a social enterprise bus tour through London including interviews with key entrepreneurs in the sector.

Stephen Timms, Minister for Competitiveness at the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, said:

Every young person should have the opportunity to be a successful entrepreneur. Last year almost 34,000 people under 25 years old took the leap and set up their own business, taking the total of self-employed young people to 147,000. Each one is learning valuable business lessons. Enterprise Week plays a big role in encouraging young people to dare to turn their ideas into reality.

Of course government funding of the event has helped, but it is the commitment of businesses large and small, as well as many well known entrepreneurs, that really makes the week the success it is.

On the back of all this activity, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has also announced the opening of its competition to find the British Small Business Champion of 2008.  There’s a top prize of £10,000 and you can request an entry form from the FSB by calling Judith Francis on 020 7592 8120.