Make Your Mark Blog

On Monday, six Make Your Markers braved the soaring temperatures and armed with our suitcases headed down on a packed train to the South West coast. Undeterred by the onslaught of Glastonbury folk at Castle Carey, we sat back admiring the rolling hills and anticipating a 99 with a flake on the beach at Paignton.

Well it wasn’t really a holiday we did have work to do. And that was to spread the word about Global Entrepreneurship Week and give our event organisers in the South West some tips for this year.

Yesterday evening a somewhat sauna-like Make Your Make towers was converted into a hot bed of Ambassador activity involving scrumptious food, a tipple of vino and lots-a schmoozing. There was a great turn out to Make Your Mark’s Ambassador summer network-fest with all our Ambassadors coming eager to share where they are at and make some new contacts (and hopefully new friends!). It was also an opportunity for us at MYM to give a HUGE pat on the back to all our amazing ambassadors for all their support and hard work. You guys are ace! (definitely up there with Murray!)

This weekend is going to be a scorcher and not just because of the weather:

800 likeminded and entrepreneurial 16-24 year olds are getting together on the Southbank this Saturday, 4th July, for an amazing day jam-packed with opportunities.

The event ‘2morro’ brings together enterprising people with new and emerging ideas.  They will be able to promote  their projects, swap skills, meet mentors, and win amazing prizes.  Participants will also get a chance to see how technology and media can make their campaigns run better - Channel 4’s Battlefront will be there showing how it’s been done so far…

Imagine if you will a bright gleaming ship.

This ship is filled to rafters with enthusiastic, cupcake loving sailors, who’s one mission in life is to promote the wonders of enterprise. Now, I bet you’re thinking, ‘hark! What a wondrous, glorious ship HMS Make Your Mark must be! I’d love to step aboard and join what surely must be a fantastic group of people. Ah but alas I doubt they have any vacancies that would suit my talents. Tis a cruel world and all this pondering shall simply drive me to despair’….

Palm trees and palm pilots – that’s what reminds me of my trip to the South West Meet Up. The warm Gulf Stream that helps to give it that ‘Riviera’ reputation acts as a great tourist attraction. But I’ve also learnt that the South West is also the UK’s enterprise hot spot with a buzzing innovative culture that’s acting as a magnet for entrepreneurs looking for new opportunities in a place that’s wired up for the latest advanced digital technology. South Devon College is a great example – it’s all 21st century design with a tangible atmosphere of creativity and innovation – the perfect setting for Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009’s first Meet Up. What a great warm up! Speakers Geoff Hallett and Kirstin Hemmingway demonstrated how a ‘can do’ attitude can make such a difference – not only to your profit margins but by bringing tangible social benefits to your community.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be in lovely sunny Paignton for the Global Entrepreneurship Week South West Meetup, part of a crack team of Make Your Mark-ers consisting of Chris, Sarah, Lauren, Rachel and Kate!

I delivered a couple of short workshops on digital tools that could help event organisers and as I sang the praises of sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook the teachers in the room helpfully pointed out that most schools actually block these sites!

Which got me thinking. Why do educational institutions dislike social networking sites so much?

A few fellow MYM’ers and I travelled to Paignton yesterday to do a couple workshops in the lead up to Global Entrepreneurship Week in November.  I delivered a presentation on the campaign’s global outreach, and offered some ideas and tips on how to run a globally focused enterprise activity.

There were some great ideas shared by the partcipants, and here are a few of them:

• Rather than looking at how social enterprise and innovation can improve living conditions in the poorest countries, we are going to look at how they can improve living conditions in the richest and most developed countries - particularly in New Orleans, USA, where there has still not been any significant re-development since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (from Dave Salter, West Exe Technology College in Exeter)

The launch of this years Morgan Foundation Awards happened on Wednesday and Thursday last week. It is a great opportunity for businesses and social enterprises to be recognised with amazing prizes on offer. Open to anyone with North West, North Wales, Shropshire and Wolverhampton previous winner and MYM Ambassadors Trendy Vend led the call for entries this year and explained how winning the young entrepreneur award last year has helped their business grown.

To enter go to http://www.mf-awards.co.uk

Gordon Brown will be very prepared for the sunshine now that he has been presented with a pair of  Zoobugs sunglasses from Make Your Mark Ambassador Dr Julie Diem Le! Julie was invited to attend a reception entitled ‘Building Britain’s Future’. Admittedly, the sunglasses are for kids so he might struggle to fit them but impressive stuff for our Ambassador none the less!!

On Tuesday I went to Walthamstow Girls school, where not only did i meet a fantastic tutor but also some incredibly talented students.

As Make Your Mark is piloting a network for students to flourish in enterprise the girls offered us some amazing feedback about what they want to really make their mark.

I want to say a big thank you to them you were stars!!!!!

Suzanne at the Big Lottery Fund just alerted me to a great resource - a report by the Young Foundation which maps rural needs across the UK. This could be useful for any entrepreneurs wishing to apply to be a Village Champion in the Village SOS project!

I went to an interesting panel discussion last week hosted by Weber Shandwick. The title was ‘What’s so hard to reach about the hard-to-reach?’ It quickly became clear that the consensus was that groups were only hard to reach if companies and organisations didn’t make an effort to reach them, and that there were plenty of opportunities to do so.

The key points raised were the importance of  ‘integrated communications’, using a variety of methods to reach different groups (not forgetting face-to-face) and ‘partnerships’ - working with organisations or media who do have a route into certain communities. They also discussed how groups did not want to be labelled by their ethnicity or age, something we have also seen through our own research into enterprise behaviours.

Last year there was some research done to look at top role models for young people.

The top spot was reserved for a family member, no surprises there. With young people seeing someone in their family as a role model, it’s good news that aspiration are linked closely to home. 

Below is the top 10:

1. A family member
2. Richard Branson
3. Jesus Christ
4. A teacher
5. Nelson Mandela
6. Diana Princess of Wales
7. Jamie Oliver
8. Winston Churchill
9. Martin Luther King
10. Bill Gates

The list is made up of very influential characters, all of whom are an inspirational in their own right.

‘360 thinking’
The phrase ‘360 degree thinking’ should be put away in a locked box along with ‘blue sky thinking’, ‘thinking outside the box’ and countless other meaningless phrases that imply that at all other times one-dimensional, dull, uncreative thinking is the norm. Any business discipline requires creative thought, but creative thinking should be an everyday occurrence, not simply trotted out when demanded and only on special occasions.

The Make Your Mark Challenge is here again and it will kick-start Global Entrepreneurship Week on 16 November 2009.

It’s the UK’s largest one day enterprise competition for schools and colleges and it’s FREE to enter. If you’re a teacher or tutor looking for a way to engage 14-19 year olds in a fun and rewarding enterprise activity, look no further!

Click here to visit the Make Your Mark Challenge website.  Registration for this year’s Challenge will open on 1 September 2009. To speak to the Challenge team call 08450 940 226 or email challenge@makeyourmark.org.uk.