Enterprising Britain 2008 – London winner
Wandsworth Youth Enterprise Centre - nominated by the London Development Agency
Wandsworth Youth Enterprise Centre, a charity offering business incubation, business training and enterprise awareness to young people, is the winner of Enterprising Britain 2008 for London. Based in Tooting, Wandsworth Youth Enterprise Centre (WYEC) has a 20 year track record of supporting young people aged 17-30 to develop their business ideas and start up their own businesses. Their mission is to ‘tackle unemployment, social exclusion and lack of opportunities for young people, by reaching out into the community to support and enable them to become enterprising’.
The borough is behind the rest of Inner London in terms of number of businesses per population head and Tooting, Roehampton and Battersea lag behind the rest of the borough in terms of enterprise activity, entrepreneurial culture and the conditions to create enterprises. Businesses tend to leave the area in order to grow and become more successful which reinforces the lack of entrepreneurial culture. The self-employment rate is lower than the London average and the number of black, asian or ethnic minority residents who are self-employed is less than half the national average at 6.1%.
WYEC offers intensive one-to-one business counselling service inter-linked with business skills workshops, training courses and access to managed workspaces. It has an incubation centre in Tooting, with a satellite office in Roehampton and formerly in Battersea. These sites, along with an extensive community outreach programme, allow WYEC to effectively reach its young audience in the borough’s priority areas to generate entrepreneurial activity.
Numerous barriers face disadvantaged young people when starting up an enterprise, including a lack of role models, cultural obstacles and lack of work experience and skills. WYEC's methods of client-led business counselling and training have been outstandingly successful in tackling these barriers. It has supported 5,000 young people leading to the set up of more than 550 businesses, 90% of which are still trading two years on.
One of WYEC’s successful initiatives is Launchpad, a programme that works with young people from the age of 14, reaching out into the community through outreach workers. Its aim is to meet as many young people as possible in the local area and delivers bite size entrepreneurial workshops, tells them about events the programme organises, and the enterprise services offered by WYEC. Launchpad workers set up informal meetings where ideas, interests and information are exchanged, and where those who want to can brainstorm business ideas and take them a stage further with help from a dedicated professional.
WYEC has put over 600 hundred young people through its business counselling programme, the Pre-Start Programme for help in planning and setting up a business, and the Post-Start-Up Programme which supports the first two years of running and establishing a new business once the young people have developed a viable business plan and secured necessary start up funding. The structure of the programme provides continuous progression at a pace appropriate to the client, with no pre-determined limits on the number of business counselling sessions.
The Post-start-up programme is geared towards encouraging independence and engagement in the wider enterprise support network. In addition client businesses will have access, if needed, to WYEC’s subsidised premises (25 business units) at their Tooting centre. At the end of the two-year period the cost of the unit will be one step below local commercial rates, at which point the client has the option to move out their fully commercial premises, 90 workspace, office, industrial units also sited in Tooting.
One young female participant set up a successful creative enterprise, selling t-shirts, fabric bags and wall canvasses featuring unique artwork. Despite facing many obstacles including dyslexia, she has made exceptional progress due to the support offered by the WYEC Business Counselling Model. She needed to talk about her difficulties and emotional issues, which would not have been possible with only a business advisor or mentor rather than a business counsellor. She says that she has very rarely felt she’s been really heard before and her confidence and belief in herself and her business idea have grown over the 8-month period she has been with WYEC.
Keren Miller, Chief Executive at Wandsworth Youth Enterprise Centre said:
“We take young people through each stage of setting up a business, from hitting on an original idea to putting together a business plan, getting funding and sourcing premises. Young people from all walks of life who access our services take away with them flexible learning skills such as creativity, problem solving, risk taking, flexibility, financial capability, resourcefulness, the ability to take initiatives and sell ideas, all of which are transferable skills in the wider world of work and further education, should they decide not to progress to setting up their own business or defer to a later date. Providing skills, confidence and opportunities for earning is the most basic aspect of economic empowerment.”
This innovative charity is a national and international role model and offers a unique model of outreach work, business counselling, training and mentoring support to young entrepreneurs aged 14 – 30. As a result of WYEC’s provision of much needed small business space and business support in the area, Wandsworth Borough Council has adopted their model as a means of encouraging even more young people to set up businesses in Battersea, Tooting and Roehampton, three of the most deprived areas of the borough.