Make Your Mark Blog

Young entrepreneurs: you might think you’ve got it all, and it’s true that you’re a mighty talented bunch. But let me tell you what you probably don’t have: a swanky trophy, an extra thousand pounds and huge national media coverage.   How do you get all this and more? By entering the Enterprising Young Brits Awards. The competition is [...]

It’s January which means there is less than a month to go until Make Your Mark With a Tenner kicks off. Up to 20,000 young people will be loaned a Tenner (yes that’s TEN pounds) and challenged to see how much profit and social impact they can make with it. With interest rates currently sitting [...]

After the heady excitement of Enterprise Week and the banana fuelled activities of the Challenge, we decided to let loose in the only way we know how…through dance of course! Enjoy.

I read a very good blog this morning about taking the plunge and setting up in a downturn. Though a very popular subject at the moment it’s still really helpful to get lots of different perspectives. So my  wish, aside from getting this and this for christmas is for you to check it out and [...]

Local business ‘Coast and Country’ have set local secondary schools a challenge. They are opening their doors and inviting students to take a look at the reception areas of Coast & Country at Grange Town, Spencerbeck, Dormanstown and Skelton.  The Challenge Students form the Redcar & Cleveland area are invited to spend time at the reception areas [...]

Make Your Mark challenge finalists, ‘Stripes’ we’re undoubtedly my favourite team of the competition - not only had they had the brilliant idea of an online Olympics fantasy-team competition, the brainy bunch made the website themselves as well - already! I should confess a slight bias - I was their ‘buddy’ on Tuesday: a job, [...]

With the help of two businesses in the region, it cost less than £320 to help 18-year old Dean Jeffries turn his life around from not having a great deal of burning career ambition to actually setting up his own social enterprise and wanting to take it forward as a real career opportunity when he [...]

The following is taken directly from the Global Fellowship website and gives and overview of the project: 2008 marked the launch of the Prime Minister’s Global Fellowship, a pilot programme for 100 young people from England, designed to take them through a series of new inter-cultural experiences that will highlight issues of language, culture, economic growth [...]

At the Make Your Mark Challenge national final on Tuesday, I was lucky enough to meet the team from St Peters School. This multi-talented group had it all! Their idea was to set up ENable, an organisation that would help educate able bodied people about disabled sports, like wheelchair basketball and football for the visually [...]

Our friends at Eastside Consulting, the social enterprise advisory experts, have launched Spark a fab competition aimed at social enterprises with a focus on homelessness. Managing Director Richard Litchfield tells us more below: “Spark has opened its doors for social enterprises to enter a unique 9 month programme to secure finance and build their capacity. We have prizes worth up [...]

During Enterprise Week 3 local colleges who helped re-launch the Federation of Small Businesses’ Keep Trade Local campaign. The winning photographs have been revealed! Here are the 6 winning shots (in no particular order!), they really capture the spirit of the campaign and will be featured on the Federation of Small Businesses’ 2009 calendar. Well done to [...]

Thought I’d make quick post about one discussion topic in particular from a mini think tank I attended in Berlin this weekend. The topic: sustainable development in the world’s least developed countries. There was just a little bit of a clash between free-marketing economists and the more idealistic (if ever so slightly less practical) members of [...]

I was a buddy yesterday at my first ever Make Your Mark Challenge Final and must say I absolutely loved it, great job all round Tori and team! The creativity, effort and professionalism of the students was so impressive particularly during the pitching session.  If there were nerves to contend with they certainly hid them [...]

Even though I had only met them that day, I couldn’t help feeling pride when my buddy team Wheatley Park School came second in the Challenge - woo hoo! Their ‘value bands’ must have caught the judges’ imagination and I had my eye on their prototype ‘rainbow’ bands (hand made by the girls in the [...]

Mikey Naylor, from Selby High School, had a great time this week when he and nine of his mates went to visit Xing, a smoothie company in Hull. Having launched a competition to ask students to come up with a great name for a brand new smoothie, Mikey put forward the winning idea - ‘Yum [...]

Well, what a month and more importantly what a CHALLENGE - our biggest and best ever! Special congratulations have to go to Crawshaw School in Leeds and Holy Trinity Senior School in Halifax for their fantastic efforts in reaching the Make Your Mark Challenge national finals. The competition was fierce and although the schools didn’t [...]

Well…what a day! Yesterday saw 21 teams from schools across the UK meet at Kings Place, London to decide once and for all ‘who is the top banana?’. Tori (Challenge and Club Manager) and I have been busy organising the National Final for the Make Your Mark Challenge 2008 for weeks now and the hard [...]

At yesterday’s Challenge final I had a cracking day buddying the eventual winners of the 14-16 category - Waldegrave School in Twickenham. Now I could be forgiven for being biased… but I kinda knew they were going to win! Who wouldn’t want their idea which was an interactive console (a little like a Tamagochi) called ‘My [...]

Yesterday I attended the Make Your Mark Challenge finals for the third time running but was again blown away by the creativity, confidence and enthusiasm of the finalists. My job was to brief Matt Littler and Darren Jeffries (TV presenters and actors, who made their name in Hollyoaks) on their roles as comperes for the [...]

Ok I’m going a little bit blog crazy today but like a proud buddy (adpotive mother) I had to share this little nugget of joy. Unbeknown to my team, in the next half hour of this interview they would be anounced the winners of the 16-19 category of the Make Your Mark Challenge. Having just pitched [...]