This year, enterprise week runs from 12 to18 November. It is the annual focal point of the “Make Your Mark” campaign—which aims to inspire young people (aged 14-30 years) to be enterprising in the broadest sense, developing a creative, can-do attitude with the skills to spot opportunities and the confidence to pursue them. This is crucial for the future aspirations of millions of young people as well as the economic future of the UK—encouraging business start-ups, social enterprises and development of an enterprising workforce. Wednesday 14 November will be Women’s Enterprise Day and Thursday 15 November will be Social Enterprise Day.

This is not simply about encouraging business start-ups and entrepreneurship. The campaign also encourages organisations across the UK to take the opportunity of Enterprise Week to celebrate and recognise the wealth of talent that is evident in every business and to encourage their employees to start thinking about ideas that have a very clear and tangible business benefit.

“Make Your Mark” is funded by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and is led by Enterprise Insight—a campaign coalition founded by the UK’s leading business organisations (CBI, British Chambers of Commerce, Institute of Directors, and the Federation of Small Businesses) in partnership with the main enterprise development organisations and working closely with Government Departments, education bodies, Regional Development Agencies and others.

Last year, Enterprise Week generated very large community interest in entrepreneurship. 448,000 people attended the 3,184 events run by 1,410 organisations. Over 20,000 people in 3,704 teams from schools, colleges and workplaces competed simultaneously around the UK in the Make Your Mark Challenge—the week’s largest single event. Over 15 per cent. of events were in colleges and universities and social enterprise had a particularly high profile, featuring in over 10 per cent. of all events and media coverage.

Enterprise Week 2007 is expected to be even bigger but it needs Members’ continued support. Members are urged to look at the campaign website: www.makeyourmark.org.uk and consider how the campaign can benefit their constituencies. Active support of Enterprise Week events taking place in constituencies and encouraging the organisations that are running them to register details of their event on the database at: www.enterpriseweek.org will help to ensure that this is the biggest Enterprise Week yet.