All Set For The Badgers Sett!

Young people under the age of 19 are being encouraged to enter a new enterprise competition to stand their chance of winning a share of up to £5000 to put towards their enterprising idea.
Challenge the Badgers Sett (named in honour of former BBC Apprentice finalist Ruth Badger, who will be on the judging panel) will be launched on 9th July by Hull City Council Training and Hull's John Cracknell Youth Enterprise Bank, who are working alongside Force-7 and GH Events to run the Dragons' Den-style competition.
Young people have until 22 October to enter their enterprising idea and business plan, which can be based on anything from a new business venture to a community project. There are three age categories for youngsters to enter; under 16's, 16 - 18 year olds and 19 year olds, and they must live in the HU1 to HU9 postcode area or attend a Hull secondary school.
Ruth Badger said:
"I want to encourage young people in Hull who possibly are not at the stage where they feel they can develop their idea on their own, or they need some extra confidence. I know when I was young if there had been such a thing as Youth  Enterprise, I would have become an entrepreneur much younger in my life - so come on young people in Hull, show us how enterprising you are.”
Independent panels will asses the business plans and then draw up a shortlist for each category who will then come face-to-face with the ‘badgers’, including Ruth Badger herself, to pitch their idea.
Maureen Foers OBE, Chair of the John Cracknell Youth Enterprise Bank and Yorkshire's Women's Enterprise Champion , will also be sitting on the judging panel. She said:
"The sort of things we as judges will be looking at is how entrants are going to best use the prize money. Perhaps they are going to employ someone or put something back into their local community, working with other young people.
"It might be the person with the most innovative idea or the one who has a great commercial business plan and needs a bit of extra cash to develop it further."
The winners of each category will then be invited to compete against each other to double their winnings against a panel that will be chaired by Ruth Badger during Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010, in November.
The competition was announced in response to Hull's highly successful Business Week events in June, which involved many young people. Research undertaken by Force-7 identified that young people want more support services to help them develop their enterprising idea.
Web address www.hullbadgers.co.uk

Ruth Badger at last year's Global Entrepreneurship Week event for Secondary School students at Hull University

30, Jun, 2010