The Prince's Trust

Part of the work of The Prince's Trust is to support disadvantaged young people to start their own business. The Trust has over 300 volunteer business mentors and once a year they aim to get them together to discuss key issues and encourage their ongoing support.

To build on the event and remind mentors of the importance of their work we devised a mini market were some of the young people The Trust has supported could show case their work. We created a display area and exhibition material for each business and we helped them maximise the opportunity of the captive audience.

As well as getting Mark Simpson from the BBC to compère the event we also secured a celebrity speaker to do a key note address. To maximise their attendance and to raise some funds for The Prince’s Trust we negotiated that they would also deliver a celebrity lecture to a business audience later the same day. With great co-ordination and teamwork we turned the venue around in under an hour after the first event had finished and we were able to welcome over 150 business leaders at virtually no additional cost to the client.

Any surprises? Less than 24 hours before the event our celebrity speaker pulled out due to sickness. Undeterred we found a replacement, with Doug Richard from Dragon’s Den hastily rearranging his diary to step into the breach.  

Did it work? The feedback was fantastic. As we knew he would, Doug Richard delivered a fantastic speech. The highlight however was a speech from one of the young people who told the audience what life was like before they got support from The Prince’s Trust. It was very emotional and it left all the delegates with a real sense of pride in their voluntary work.