LATEST NEWS July 07: The Southwark Dragon's Apprentice

A DVD film is being created following four winning student teams who recently participated in the Southwark Education Business Alliance (www.southwarkeba.org.uk) project The Southwark Dragon's Apprentice. John Barkus Third Sector Consultancy was commissioned to develop and implement the project.

The Dragon’s Apprentice – Southwark Education Business Alliance video brief – Summer 2007

This is a positive film about the Southwark schools involved with the Southwark Dragon’s Apprentice project. It’s aim to highlight entrepreneurial flair and enterprise themes with four Southwark schools: Bacon’s College; Harris Academy Bermondsey; Charter; and City of London Academy.

Only 100 students could be nominated. The students then needed to form a team of five people (and nominate their team leader). The Dragon’s Panel (the panel of five business experts) were only able to fund four teams with an amount of up to £250 per team per business idea.

All the teams were tasked to develop a business idea to run on a stall at the forthcoming Rotherhithe Festival, London SE16. (for more information follow this link. http://www.southwark.gov.uk/DiscoverSouthwark/EventsSection/whatson/rotherhithefestival.html

Meeting at 9:30am in London Bridge on Monday 2nd July 2007 at the Bankside Restaurant, Southwark Bridge Road for a business breakfast all the students came together for a day of workshops around enterprise and will included: making presentations; event planning; human resources and motivating a team; finance and budgeting; and marketing.

At 2pm on Monday 2nd July 2007 the students will faced the Dragon’s Panel of business experts who included: Lord Ouseley of Peckham Rye; Joy Nichols QAE; Mei Sim Lai OBE DL FCA FCCA; Mayor of Southwark Cllr Bob Skelly; Kelvin Macdonald (MD Bankside Restaurants); and Chris Ace from the Southwark Education Business Alliance.

PricewaterhouseCoopers sent some of their employees to run business workshops on accounting.

The final winning team will be annouced at 4pm on Sunday 15th July and as a prize will be given the prize of becoming Lord Harris of Peckham's Apprentices for a day. The students will join Lord Harris on a day’s tour of his business empire! Also all the profits made from running the stalls will go back into the schools.

The whole process is being filmed by a small film crew to create a film to be shown on the Freeview TV “Community Channel”. The film will also be downloadable from the Community Channel website www.communitychannel.org.uk 

For more details please contact event organiser John Barkus on 0780 123 5058

Welcome to my new website www.johnbarkus.com I am now focussing all my energy on my new and unique management consultancy for the third sector. Click on services above to find out more about this innovative approach to providing quality and responsible management consultancy. 

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The future role of the third sector in social and economic regeneration was highlighted in the Chancellor's recent budget speech showing a real commitment from Government to see three-year funding, a community assets fund and an allocation of an extra £6.5m within the Safer and Stronger Communities fund in Local Area Agreements. With the Government's real focus on building the capacity of local community groups to help strengthen the voice of the local third sector to support our communities now is the time for us to work together and review and refresh our organisations.

With decades of experience, this fresh and innovative consultancy will be able to support all your individual and organisations needs. We can provide a UK wide service and our engagement rates are individually tailored to each organisation.

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All text and images copyright John Barkus 2007