home
	contact us

Download the full project brochure now (pdf file 600kb)

As economic reform in the developing world gathers pace, the need to build a dynamic enterprise culture to meet the challenges of the future and underpin the development of vibrant communities across the UK becomes ever more important. With the right support and help, young people have the potential to make a major contribution to enhancing the future prosperity of both the communities in which they live and the wider economy. Young people living in communities disadvantaged by social and economic change, poverty and/or migration face a range of barriers and need specialised support to empower them to share in, and contribute to, creating a thriving and dynamic enterprise economy. The network of partners will reach out to, and engage with, young people in their own local communities using exciting, innovative and dedicated methods of best practice to support them in their exploration of self-employment. They will be supported with comprehensive enterprise development programmes to find out if their dreams and plans for self-employment are realistic. Business skills and individual intensive training programmes together with the provision of low-cost premises ensure a good start for local entrepreneurs. The partnership will draw on WYE’s experience over 17 years in successfully helping young people in South London to set up and run their own businesses and nine years of supporting the development of youth enterprise incubation centres.

The Wandsworth Youth Enterprise Approach

Care is taken with business development programmes to ensure that the young person feels he/she is comfortable with self-employment and has the skills, self-confidence and knowledge to make it succeed. There is a non-judgemental atmosphere in which clients feel free to voice and discuss their motivation and come to recognise how to follow their own aspirations with self-confidence and increasing skill. No time limit to the guidance provided is imposed at this stage. Once the young person has started his/her business, free business counselling (provided on or off-site) and subsidised office/workshop space in WYEC’s incubation centre, if required, is available for a further two years.

WYE’s approach is based clearly, deliberately and unambiguously on encouraging the young person to find his or her own solutions to the business issues he or she may face. Given the difficulties many of these young people have had, the counselling provided may need to be intensive and to tackle a lack of both life skills and workplace experience. Young people are encouraged to identify possible solutions to the difficulties they face in ways that take account of their own suggestions and their own business ideas. The result is a clearer understanding of what is needed, and a greater degree of commitment to it and, as a result, personal growth, development and empowerment.

Trans-European Cooperation Developed

Wandsworth Youth Enterprise’s model of a totally integrated
youth enterprise incubation programme has been of considerable interest to the European Commission, governments and organisations in various regions of Europe. In response to this, WYE has developed an approach that facilitates the effective dissemination and transfer of its model and the sharing of good practice. The model has been successfully adapted and transferred into a number of regions in Central Europe, leading to the establishment of the first youth enterprise incubator centres in this area.

The Network

youngbusiness.net UK is a true partnership, offering all partners the opportunity to learn from each other, share models of best practice, become stronger and more robust. Through the network of unique projects with the same core principles, individual partners have the power to make combined bids for similar projects, use the joint buying power of six centres and information sharing to help each individual organisation to reduce costs and raise funds.

The strength of the network means that each partner can achieve individual goals more quickly and more efficiently by sharing experience, workload and links to other agencies. An important long-term effect of the network is the larger voice it gives each partner to influence policy makers, funders and government bodies to recognise the true value of youth enterprise incubation in local regeneration and individual development and growth.