Young people to compete for social enterprise grants

The Potential Organisation, whose director Paul Clark is the former director of children’s services at Harrow, has launched a competition offering young people the chance to bid for a starting grant of £200 that will go towards creating an enterprise that benefits their community.

Individuals or groups of up to five young people will be able to apply for the slice of funding and 10 projects will be shortlisted by a board of judges that includes children’s minister Tim Loughton, Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers as well as actors, sportspeople and media personalities.

Clark said: "We launched this partly because of the economic difficulties of the country and the impact this is having on young people trying to find a job. This is our small way of trying to engage younger children to have that experience with business people, ministers, police and other workforces.

"It is a small step forward to empowering young people to learn those life skills earlier. Our dream would be for larger companies to do something like this. If all the FTSE 500 companies would offer something like this we would be opening up this opportunity to a lot of young people. If a small organisation like us can do it then they certainly can."

The 10 finalists will be mentored by the judges as well as the Potential Organisation’s youth advisory board. They will also be required to report back on their project in a two-page report, setting out what they achieved using the £200.