Delegates for the E20’s first summit include Lord Bilimoria, chairman of Cobra Beer; Doug Richard, founder of School for Startups; Will King, founder & CEO of King of Shaves; and Shaa Wasmund, founder of Smarta.
The inaugural meeting of the E20, sponsored by Natwest, will take place as part of MADE: The Entrepreneur Festival, which opens for business at Chatsworth House on Wednesday 19thSeptember. The meeting will be chaired by Lord Young of Graffham, the Prime Minister’s enterprise adviser.
The E20 will feature a changing cast of the nation’s leading entrepreneurs, and meet on an ongoing basis to develop entrepreneurial solutions for the major social and economic challenges facing Britain today.
Its opening summit, as part of MADE: The Entrepreneur Festival, will focus on the issue of the Missing Million, the unprecedentedly high number of NEETs, 16-24 year olds not in education, employment or training. Recent figures showed that the level of young unemployed people in the UK rose by 5.8% over the last year, to 1.01 million.
The E20 will develop an entrepreneur ‘Action Plan to Combat Youth Unemployment’. This will contain ideas and initiatives to drive employment and self-employment outcomes.
The group will deliver practical new ideas around access to finance, mentoring, apprenticeships and enterprise education, as just some of the factors that could inspire an enterprise generation. A report summarising the findings will be produced following the summit.
Members of the E20 will be joined by experts on the issue of youth employment, including Michael Mercieca, Chief Executive of Young Enterprise, and Laura Wyatt-Smith, Senior Head of Enterprise and Employment at youth charity the Prince’s Trust.
The E20 has been founded with the simple belief that entrepreneurs have the get up and go to make a real difference to communities across the countries. It is based on providing a forum where practical ‘can-do’ ideas can be developed along with a platform where they can be actioned.
Michael Hayman, chairman of MADE: The Entrepreneur Festival and co-founder of SevenHills, commented: “The E20 will harness the power of entrepreneurs to address the big challenges facing Britain today. MADE: TheEntrepreneur Festival is all about inspiring and celebrating Britain’s enterprise culture and the E20 will can make an active contribution to the social and economic problems that we face. The intent of this group is to make a difference to communities the length and breadth of the country with can-do ideas that aim to inspire a new enterprise generation.”
