The Scouts Go Entrepreneurial

The Scout Association are set to launch an ‘Entrepreneur Badge’, adding business start-ups and enterprise to a list of approved activities that more traditionally includes knot tying, sing-a-longs and camping.

The Scouts are the latest group in a wave of schools and mainstream youth organisations to promote entrepreneurship as a discipline that encourages self-reliance and leadership.

The new ‘Entrepreneur Badge’ which shows a rising bar chart suggesting increasing sales or profits is the brain child of multimillionaire Richard Harpin, the chief executive of domestic insurance company Homeserve.

One activity will see teenage scouts present their business ideas to a Dragons’ Den-style panel.
The badge will also be awarded for fundraising.

Harpin, a former member of the First Stocksfield Cubs and Scouts, Northumberland, said: “I felt there was a group of young people who would like to hear about entrepreneurship in an exciting environment outside the classroom.”

Four scouts from Lichfield who set up a mobile barbecue business will be among the first to receive the entrepreneurship badge.

Among attempts to foster an enterprising culture from a young age are an annual competition run by the business education charity Young Enterprise. The 15 to 17-year-old students elect a board of directors among themselves, raise share capital and develop a product or service over the course of the academic year.

For more information on the Scout Association follow this link: http://www.scoutbase.org.uk/ 
www.young-enterprise.org.uk/