News
LDC and The Prince’s Trust – four years strong
14 Jul 2023
Together with leading youth charity The Prince’s Trust, we’re celebrating four years and counting, of a partnership formed to inspire the next generation of UK entrepreneurs.
Young people represent the future of the UK and our economy, but a recent study by The Prince’s Trust found that 2.8 million young people don’t think their job prospects will ever recover from the pandemic. The size of the challenge has never been clearer.
Last summer, we followed up the success of our initial three-year partnership, by announcing that we were more than doubling our commitment to The Prince’s Trust. This five-year UK-wide partnership extension cemented LDC as the leading corporate supporter of young entrepreneurs at The Prince’s Trust.
Together we will help up to 10,000 additional young people aged between 18 to 30 to start, grow and sustain their own business. Our funding has already supported more than 2,250 young people to explore their business ideas and turn them into reality via the charity’s Explore Enterprise course. We are also contributing towards a more diverse group of future business leaders; a quarter of the young entrepreneurs supported by the Enterprise programme are from ethnic minority backgrounds and more than half are female.
Our partnership is enabling two new initiatives launching in 2024, Extend Enterprise, supported exclusively by LDC, will support young business leaders to sustain and grow their business and the development of an Alumni Community, allowing the Enterprise entrepreneurs to better connect with each other and valuable supporting networks.
Our partnership with The Prince’s Trust is also core to many company-wide initiatives and our employees continue to enjoy getting involved in a range of activities across the country:
- Six of our employees were ‘Dragons’ on it’s Million Makers programme this year. They provided feedback and guidance to teams of employees from a variety of organisations who had developed business plans to turn £1,500 seed funding into a £10,000 fundraising target for The Prince’s Trust
- We also hosted a cohort of young entrepreneurs at our regional Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders events, with each given the opportunity to network and promote their products, from jewellery and leather goods to homeware and artistically-designed stationery.
- For the second year running, we took part in The Prince’s Trust’s Brilliant Breakfast campaign, which unites and supports young women and champions gender equality in the workplace, by hosting a panel session in London on female leadership.
- Our teams have participated in various sporting activities, from sponsored sports days and bike rides to colleagues taking part in February’s Future Steps challenge by walking a total of more than 10 million steps.
As anyone who’s visited one of our offices recently will know, we have also commissioned and bought the work of a number of young artists supported by The Prince’s Trust to display across our national network. One such talent is 24-year-old Holly Ramsay, from Salford, whose artwork hangs in our Manchester office.
Holly discovered The Prince’s Trust during the pandemic when she was looking to get some advice and support to help get her small homeware business, The Neighbourhood Threat, off the ground.
Holly’s story
Holly recalls: “I was struggling to make my products using the machinery and equipment I had at home so my range was very limited. But the grant I received during lockdown meant I could purchase an industrial sewing machine that made all the difference and I’ve used literally every day since!
“The Prince’s Trust also invited me to trade at Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place festival, which was great for business, and I’m excited to have been booked there again this year.
“To have my artwork on display in the LDC Manchester office feels just fabulous! I've never had my work printed in such a large scale before so it means a lot.”
What would Holly say to someone thinking of starting their own business?
“Be brave, and try not to overthink everything. It might not be easy, but every day is a learning curve, and you’ll never know the things you can achieve unless you try."
We’re excited to back the ambitions of young people like Holly for many years to come.