guest post by Alex Mitchell
Earlier this summer Young Brits led a small delegation of young entrepreneurs and individuals within the youth enterprise space to Athens, Greece for the European Youth Entrepreneurship Conference. This is a new initiative created by the European Confederation of Young Entrepreneurs to help young entrepreneurs from all around the Europe exchange ideas and best practices, set up business ties and make their concerns and policy suggestions heard, especially towards the European Union leadership.
The Conference, kickstarted in Athens at the end of June and it will be held on a biannual basis at the EU member state holding the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The conference brought together over 100 young entrepreneurs from across Europe to discuss how they can work together and collaborate with other stakeholders in the direction of overcoming the fragmentation barrier and creating the European entrepreneurial identity.
There was an impressive line-up of speakers from Europe, US, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa and the Leadership of the European Confederation of Young Entrepreneurs also published the “Declaration of Athens” at the conference ― This was a call to action for European young entrepreneurs to promote high growth and innovative entrepreneurship.
The UK sent a delegation of five young entrepreneurs (listed at end of this piece) to the conference who were running businesses in a wide variety of sectors. The delegation included competition winners/ membership ambassadors from the Start Up Loans Company, The Institute of Directors, Launch Pad Labs, the Young Brits Network and the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance. The conference was also joined by representative form the Labour Party’s shadow business team, to hear first hand about some of the innovative projects taking place in Europe within the youth entrepreneurship scheme.
In the next three blogs in this series I have asked some of the delegates to share their direct insights from the conference.
The UK delegation to the conference:
• Alex Mitchell, Co Founder Young Brits and Founder of Causarma
• Amy Barker, Founder of Director of Monks & Co Clothing
• Douglas Bell, Founder of Hideout and entrepreneur in residence at Launch Pad Labs
• Nathaniel Peat, Founder of The Safety Box
• Arina Sprynz, Founder of Rinz Sound
• Glynn Pegler, Founder of Culture Group
• Matt Kelcher, Advisor to the Labour Party Business Team
