Lincs Expertise Rocks Gibraltar

Extract from the Business News Supplement of the Grimsby Telegraph 15 July 2008.

Expertise from the South Bank is being used to introduce Young Enterprise to Gibraltar.

Young Enterprise (YE) is a national not-for-profit organisation which enables young people to experience a variety of practical learning programmes to do with business.

All of them involve the support of volunteers from businesses and organisations.

Young Enterprise is strongly represented in this region and now Stella Onyett, YE development manager for South Humber, has been chosen to help develop YE in Gibraltar.

Stella, who has been working for YE for about four years, has already visited Gibraltar and has started the training work for lecturers and business representatives who are going to be involved from September.

YE is already represented in many overseas countries.  A former colleague of Stella’s from North Yorkshire who now lives in Spain suggested that YE would be welcomed in Gibraltar.

Steve Booth, chief executive for YE in Yorkshire and the Humber, then approached Stella to deliver the necessary training, as she has a background in learning and development and worked extensively in the field throughout the UK in her previous job.

She said: “It is very exciting initiative which is a brilliant opportunity for the young people in Gibraltar to experience running their own businesses and hopefully in the future all students in Gibraltar from primary level upwards will experience YE.”

She added: “The business people and lecturers are now all raring to go.  The business volunteers in fact needed reining back, as they now have to wait to be allocated to a specific Young Enterprise company in September.

“They all seemed very competitive and I am sure this will be a good thing for the students who will also have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon.”

The development has been warmly welcomed by government and business representatives in Gibraltar.

Initially students from Gibraltar College will be involved and then this will expand.
Also at the training sessions were two teachers from Tollbar Business Enterprise and Humanities College.  Vince Groak provided real life examples of the role of the link teacher, explaining how things worked in practice at Tollbar.

Andy Clark, who has been tasked with introducing the International Baccalaureate qualification at Tollbar, said with the introduction of the qualification he expected sixth form numbers to increase next academic year and explained how the school therefore hopes to have more Year 12 YE companies too.

All three South Bank representatives were questioned in detail by both the lecturers and business representatives from Gibraltar.

It is now hoped that strong links will be forged between YE on the South Bank and Gibraltar as a result of this initiative.