Young Enterprise Grampian is a charity working to provide practical experience of enterprise and entrepreneurship to secondary school pupils in the area. The flagship initiative is the Companies Programme, where youngsters, typically in 5th and 6th year, form and operate a small business for a year.

The school students – Young Achievers – do everything from setting the company up and raising capital, opening a bank account, devising products to sell, producing, marketing and selling their product, keeping accounts and finally presenting a report to a judging panel. This panel selects the best companies in Grampian to go forward to the national competition finals.

Young Enterprise Grampian supports these Young Achievers by:

1. Organising business training to introduce the students to all aspects of company operation (in September each year)
2. Providing each company with a Business Advisor – a volunteer from the local business community who advises the students on all aspects of their company operation (whilst carefully avoiding actually doing the work themselves!)

YEG are an entirely voluntary organisation, and depend on the support of the local business community to provide volunteers and money to enable us to operate. It costs us about £15,000 each year to run our programme of support.

Pupils will pitch their businesses to the judging panel at the regional finals held at The Marcliffe Hotel in Aberdeen on 27th April 2010. The winners will go on to represent their area at the Scottish National Finals in Glasgow in June 2010.

See www.yes.org.uk