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University of Leicester Supporting Students and Graduates to Start Businesses of Tomorrow

Posted on 29/10/09
University of Leicester

Forget Dragons Den, a new generation of budding entrepreneurs at the University of Leicester have enlisted the help of their own student development service to get help in starting up a business. Sixteen students and graduates from the University have been given such support in partnership with Enterprise Inc, to assist them in turning their viable business ideas into a reality, and to stimulate new business in the East Midlands.

Ranging from a novelty gifts to software design, the business ideas are extremely varied and creative.

One of the twelve participants to be awarded a bursary from the project, Harmless, is a self harm support and information Community Interest Company that provides training and development to health professionals, and support to people who self harm. Set up by Caroline Roe and Amy Harris, the business has just secured its first contract with Nottingham NHS Trust, to be housed and support NHS staff to enable them to improve their performance with people who present with self harm and for the first time, to deliver structured face to face support for people who self harm.

This is a key step for the company in growing the business and demonstrating social enterprise. Providing a professional service to carers and healthcare professionals will help to ensure that Harmless is a sustainable business, with a robust business model in ensuring future income generation.

Rajinder Bhuhi, Enterprise Learning Officer at the University, has been working with Harmless for the past six months, offering advice and assistance through training and business mentoring.

She said: Enterprise Inc has given undergraduate, post graduates and graduates the opportunity to develop their ideas into a business with training, support and relevant business mentoring. This project has shown that with encouragement and dedicated quality support, students skills and confidence are strengthened enabling them to make their ideas become a real and profitable businesses. We will be working to see how we can secure further funds to be able to continue offering this type of support to students.

Caroline Roe, Director of Harmless has benefited greatly from the support of Enterprise Inc in partnership with the University of Leicester. She said: Enterprise Inc has given me that extra bit of confidence I needed to transform a successful community project into a functioning and successful Community Interest Company. I would recommend this project to anyone thinking of starting a business who wants to ensure that they have their planning and network in place to support their new business.

Harmless was involved in contributing to the research for A World Of Pain: Meera Syal On Self Harm, a BBC documentary on the subject which aired in June. Plans are underway for the company to publish a book and an exciting prospect for the business is that Meera Syal has confirmed her support for the book project and she will be writing the foreword.

With a growing national reputation, Harmless has secured funding from Comic Relief, The National Lottery, Time to Change and the Nottingham Community Foundation. It has also won an East Midlands Community Impact Award, and having now registered as a Community Interest Company to take the work it had done as a community group forwards as a sustainable project, Harmlesss future looks extremely positive.

As part of the Enterprise Inc Training and Development programme, workshops ran in the Universitys new David Wilson Library gave students an insight into a variety of business subjects including; Business Planning, Financial Planning & Forecasting, Marketing Strategy, Sales & PR and Negotiation skills. As well as commercial advice, students were also given the opportunity to network and hear guest talks from established businesses to inspire the budding entrepreneurs. Applications are open and you can apply at www.enterpriseinc.co.uk A new workshop programme is due to begin in December and applications are closing on 12th November 2009.

Enterprise Inc is being funded by a partnership of the regions nine Universities, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the East Midlands Development Agency (emda).

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