What a difference One Day makes

Apr 11 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

ENTERPRISING schoolchildren have been encouraging business owners to give their time to inspire entrepreneurs of the future.

Young Enterprise North East has launched the One Day initiative to ask employers to give up one day of resources in the form of time, staff, expertise or profits to encourage the next generation of business leaders.

Students from Newcastle’s West Denton Primary School and Westgate Community College took to the city streets with 10ft tall letters spelling “One Day” to flag up the message. They completed their day of enterprise by taking part in a pitch in Dragons’ Den style at the Robert Stephenson Building in the final of a business ideas competition put together by the _space architecture firm.

It is an initial signatory to the project, with Sage, Wellstream, Accenture and One NorthEast. The initiative offers employers 10 pledges to choose from. They include giving one day of an employee’s time to work in a school or inviting a student to visit the workplace for a day. It aims to sign up one employer a day for the 18 months of the campaign.

Yene chief executive Catherine Marchant said: “We need to keep the flame of enterprise alive in young people and with the wider support of the regional business community, we hopefully can create more business start-ups from the younger members of our society and develop more enterprising attitudes and work based skills. This campaign is simple and direct, any business large or small can be involved, as they can pick and choose their level of commitment depending on their size.

“One Day pledges are so flexible they can be implemented into daily business life and can even form a very practical part of your corporate social responsibility strategies or career development plans.”