17/05/12

Young entrepreneurs - the key to creating 100,000 new jobs in the South says Coast to Capital LEP

Dr Russell Strutt – Principal of Central Sussex College, explains how education will play a part in generating 100,000 jobs within the Coast to Capital area

There is a revolution going on in education within the South East to spot future Richard Bransons at an early age and nurture their entrepreneurial skills though school, college and university.

It's all part of the Coast to Capital initiative to develop 100,000 new jobs over the next 25 years within an area bordered by Croydon in the north, Lewes and Newhaven to the East and Chichester to the West.

Spearheading this enterprise education programme is Dr Russell Strutt, Principal of Central Sussex College at Crawley who has enrolled the Universities at Brighton and Chichester, and linked up with other Post 16 colleges in Croydon and Worthing to prepare tomorrow's workforce to meet the needs of new industries and services.

And it is already working. Recently, Central Sussex College gave five teams of 16+ potential entrepreneurs the opportunity to attend a series of master classes developed by Brighton University to get young people thinking outside the box. Each group had to identify a new product or service and develop a strategy to bring it to market, then pitch them to a Dragon's Den panel of established entrepreneurs.

Dr Strutt said:

"Two of the ideas were snapped up immediately, with panel members fighting among themselves for a piece of the action.

"It is all about developing entrepreneurial skills to enable young people to create jobs for themselves through new business ventures, self-employment and working from home. We have learned that every entrepreneur needs a wide range of other people – specialists in engineering, IT, marketing, web design and with financial skills to bring these ideas to fruition.

"The jobs lost during this recession will not come back in the numbers that we need, so this initiative is all about getting young people to stay in education, and get them on the road to creating their own futures."

The plan is to nurture entrepreneurial skills from primary right through to university and provide the right climate and infrastructure to develop a range of new high-growth businesses within the Coast to Capital area. Its ambitious, but if Richard Branson's Virgin Group can spawn 50,000 jobs, there is every reason to believe that an army of like-minded entrepreneurs can transform the Coast to Capital area into the growth capital of the UK.

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