So there was I was, due to leave for the Northampton and Daventry Area Final for the Young Enterprise awards and I was probably as nervous as hell, because I felt I had a lot resting on them being a success.
Marion Gould of YE meeting The Saints
One of the challenges we faced was that there has a been a big decline in the number of schools taking part in Young Enterprise, for reasons I think are misguided and wrong, but that’s a discussion for another post. We needed to drum up interest and excitement for the project, so I railroaded through the area board a few things that had to happen for this event.
Firstly I felt the venue needed to be exciting, so what could be more exciting for student that the home of the Northampton Saints rugby team, Franklins Gardens. More than that that, fellow board member was able to arrange for a couple of the Saints players to meet the students and chat with them, and about the students projects.
Historically the trophies had always been those tacky tin cups, I pushed the budget and insisted we use glass engraved trophies which are must more impressive for the students to look at and hold.
We needed a speaker who would engage with the students, someone who is not your normal business speaker, and for that another fellow board member arranged for Brad Burton to volunteer his time to entertain the students.
The Chief Executive of Young Enterprise East Midlands arrived to come and see what all the fuss was about, so nothing like a bit of extra pressure there.
At the last minute a judge had to pull out meaning I spent most of the night before doing last minute judging of the entrants, meaning someone else had to step into my role of MC’ing the event. It’s partly a shame that I spent almost the whole event in a back room and missed the rugby players, the newspaper reporter, the visitors, mingling with the guests, but do you know what .. the rest of our team from the area board did fantastic and this is a thank you to everyone who helped make our first awards night organised by us, the new Northampton & Daventry Area Board for Young Enterprise, a success.
In particular I’d like to thank Julia Watson, she runs an event organising company called W17 Limited and is on the area board. She pretty much pulled everything together using her skills of event organising.
Not forgetting everyone else on the day being;
- Peter Douglas, runs a corporate finance company called Business Finance Services and is our treasurer and arranger of getting the Saints players to attend.
- Julia Doherty, runs a recruitment company called Ethos Recruitment and our secretary, and for arranging Brad Burton to attend.
- Chris Conway, fellow board member from Ford Motors who was running around looking after everyone on the night!
- Richard Mawby, our youngest board member and ex-Young Enterprise student who looked after the students on the night.
…and I’d never forget the other two judges, Julian Winch from Snap-On Tools and Julie Furnival from Northamptonshire Enterprise.
Finally, this would not have happened at all without the financial support from our supporters on the night, who were;
- HW Chartered Accountants – Supporter of the Overall Company Award with Runners Up
- Walkerpack – Supporter of the Best Product/Service
- Blue Cube Business – Supporter of Best Sales & Marketing
- Red-Team Security – Supporter of Best Presentation
We were also very lucky to have the support of some photography graduates from the University of Northampton who attended to photograph the event, which coupled with having a newspaper local reporter there, other cameras flashing and one of the YE student companies being a photography company we have lots of photo’s to upload!
If you would like to be involved in Young Enterprise, whether to help financial support projects such as the Company Program or to volunteer your time as a business mentor to students please get in touch!
