Prince’s Trust & RBS A-Z of Young Businesses: ‘Y’ – Carly Ward: Young Entrepreneur Society

Despite this she worked hard at school and got herself to college. After leaving college at 19, Carly was unemployed for 15 months.

She had no real qualifications, and her only income was through benefits.

However, in that time Carly was to devise a business idea, the Young Entrepreneur Society (YES) over the kitchen table. She needed funding to make this happen and Carly contacted The Prince’s Trust. It did not take long before Carly had the support of a business mentor and a low-interest loan that could enable her to buy the basic equipment she needed.

Carly has now devised and sells the accredited ‘12 steps to success’ programme which teaches young people life skills, personal development and entrepreneurial skills with the main aim of helping them to set up in business as well as running entrepreneur networking events.

To her massive credit, Carly has since won the Inspirational Woman in Business award 2011 at the House of Lords, the Haines Watts Young Entrepreneur of the Year Special Achievement Award and the Universal Peace Federation’s Youth Achievement Award.

Carly has also made Management Today’s top 35 Women under 35 and is the youngest entry this year.

Carly’s plans for the future are to sell her training programme, which she recently won government funding for the 16-18 age group, in schools and colleges across the country and to take the networking events for young entrepreneurs to every major city in the UK.

Carly feels contacting The Prince’s Trust enabled her not just financially to start up her business but gave her the support and mentoring she needed to set up her business.

http://www.youngentrepreneursociety.org.uk