Graduate Entrepreneurship wins national award!!!
Monday, 12th September 2011
At the annual National Enterprise Educator Awards, held at Coventry Cathedral, the category Enterprise ‘Champions’ was won by the Graduate Entrepreneurship Project (GEP), which is a collaboration between all eleven universities and higher education institutes in the Yorkshire and Humber region. It has helped to create hundreds of new jobs and businesses.
The scheme originated in 2001, covering just West Yorkshire. Six years later, backed by the development agency Yorkshire Forward, it began to encompass the entire region. In 2010 the European Regional Development Fund awarded £1.3 million to the GEP and this figure was matched by the partners, meaning that it had a pot of £2.6 million. The funding covers the project’s work until 2013.
Project Manager Louise Bermingham of the University of Huddersfield said that she and her colleagues were delighted when they scooped the Enterprise Champions prize.
“It is a fabulous honour,” she said. “At a time of public spending cutbacks we were still able to secure funding for three years, and this award is further recognition for our work.”
Alison Price, Director of Educator Development for the National Centre for Enterprise and Education, said: “It is rare to find organisations working in true partnership, particularly in Higher Education or emerging areas of expertise, however all the regional institutions of the Graduate Entrepreneurship Project have shown what can be achieved when close partnership working creates true synergy and support.”
The GEP means that graduates with business ideas can apply through their university for financial aid and obtain back-up in the form of advice and mentoring. Also, the project runs ‘Boot Camps’ - intensive four-day courses which enable ambitious would-be entrepreneurs to learn commercial skills and pick the brains of successful business people.
So far the GEP has offered advice and assistance to over 270 new businesses. At least 274 jobs have been created and it is estimated that 2,554 new sets of skills have been developed.
- The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) was set up in 1975 to stimulate economic development in less prosperous regions of the European Union. ERDF is provided to support the European Union’s cohesion policy that seeks to redress imbalances in development between regions and Member States. It is used to support projects that can help local economies address the challenges of globalisation and contribute to delivering Europe’s 2020 strategy of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Information about the European Union’s support for regions is available at http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/index_en.htm
