FORMER Dragons’ Den star Doug Richard has been inspiring the youth of today to be more entrepreneurial.
Workshops were held at Highbury College all day yesterday and students, employers and pupils from local schools were invited along to learn more about starting their own businesses.
The college is one of more than 100 universities and colleges that Doug will be visiting over the next three years with the aim of creating a new generation of educational entrepreneurs.
Doug is founder of School for Startups – an enterprise focused on teaching entrepreneurship across the UK. He starred in the first series of Dragons’ Den.
He said: ‘I’m really interested in supporting the work of colleges in the country. Highbury College is one of the best. The programme is about supporting further education colleges so that’s what I wanted to do.
‘It was well received. They seemed pretty excited and they asked lots of questions.’
The programme targets senior managers and educators to show them how they can actively help their university or college to become more entrepreneurial.
The workshops promoted self-employment as viable options for students.
Wendy Funnell, head of the centre of entrepreneurship at Highbury College, said: ‘We invited Doug to come down because he’s an amazingly successful entrepreneur.
‘We are very keen to learn as much as we can from him.
‘We want our students to learn about encouraging and developing their employment skills.
‘It’s gone really well, probably better than we could have imagined.
‘Doug is very likeable, funny and knowledgeable.’
Student Mohammed Khan, 17, said: ‘Doug was amazing. I’ve been thinking about starting a business for a long time so it was great to get advice from such a successful entrepreneur like Doug. It’s made me feel really positive about the future.’
Nicolas Bedin, 17, added: ‘Doug was really inspirational. It was quite amazing to speak to him on a personal level and hear about his journey.’
Comments