From today’s telegraph: Young homeless get chance to sell ideas
November 27th, 2007 by PeterSounds a great scheme to me.
The Currys and PC World retail group has begun an experiment to give homeless people the chance to become entrepreneurs. DSGI has teamed up with Foyer Federation, the homeless young people charity, to launch the Big Enterprise Challenge. Fifty young people from around the country were invited to take part in the first trial which took place in north London. They were given coaching and practical lessons in selling and then pitched their ideas to the retailer’s senior buyers. All those taking part won a year’s worth of mentoring to help get their idea off the ground. Sir John Collins, DSGI’s chairman, said businesses were not doing enough to harness entrepreneurship to inspire people from disadvantaged backgrounds to have the confidence to act on their ideas. “We want to give them access to business people by helping them understand what business and enterprise is about,” said Sir John. “The best of them could become entrepreneurs themselves” For the majority, getting employment in an enterprising venture could be where they get too.” He added that while groups such as DSGI could fund initiatives like this as part of their community programmes they had to concentrate on their core businesses and leave the delivery and follow through to specialists such as Foyer. “This is something of an experiment. We want to see how well Foyer follows it up and how helpful it is.”
Recent Comments