National Enterprise Network is proud to announce its support of Get Mentoring, a ground breaking project announced today which will unlock, train and support a whole new community of business mentors in the UK.  National Enterprise Network will be working with its membership base across the nine English regions in order to promote and train new mentors as part of the programme.

As the membership body for those committed to the support and development of enterprise, National Enterprise Network has 100 locally based enterprise support organisations in its membership, providing independent and impartial advice, training and mentoring to new and emerging businesses.  These organisations maintain this core service throughout the pre-start and early stages of setting up a business as well as to those businesses that are already established.  In 2010-11 alone, this network annually supported over 320,000 clients across the country.

Get Mentoring, led by the Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative (SFEDI), will recruit and train thousands of business mentors in the UK from the small, medium and micro business community. Once trained they will be deployed across a range of mentoring organisations accessible via mentorsme.co.uk, a national web portal that provides a single point of access to mentoring services.  Mentorsme.co.uk was launched in the summer by the British Bankers Association (BBA) and provides access to anyone looking for mentoring support as they start or grow their own business.

National Enterprise Network members are well placed to offer mentoring services due to their many years’ experience of working with pre start and start up clients and supporting business owners in regards to the challenges faced from both a business development and personal perspective.  Having built up strong and long standing relationships with the private sector within their areas, members are easily able to source experienced and knowledgeable business people who are interested in offering their help to others. Members are used to working with clients over an extended period of time and can also offer a wider package of business advice and support alongside a mentoring service.

Commenting on the partnership with Get Mentoring, the National Enterprise Network Chief Executive Dawn Whiteley said: “National Enterprise Network is very happy to support the Get Mentoring programme as it offers a considerable opportunity to promote and train well needed mentors for small businesses.  We know from our members that their start up clients really value face to face support and mentoring offers an additional support tool for those businesses that need it.  We look forward to working with our members and the Get Mentoring team to create a new mentoring community.”

Through grant funding of £1.2m the government has provided the financial support to ensure a quality approach to mentoring in the UK, whilst ‘going with the grain’ of how the enterprise community want to access support through helping each other. The project is designed to not only boost capability and capacity in the UK’s small, medium and micro businesses, but also radically increase their survival rate.

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For more information on National Enterprise Network and its involvement the Get Mentoring programme, please contact Hayley Williams, Head of External Relations at National Enterprise Network – hayley.williams@nationalenterprisenetwork.org / 01234 831623

Notes:
1. National Enterprise Network is the membership body for those committed to the support and development of enterprise. Members are drawn from enterprise support organisations that provide independent and impartial advice, training and mentoring to new and emerging businesses. As well as enterprise agencies, members also include Chambers of Commerce, local authorities, specialist enterprise providers, universities and corporate organisations. The National Enterprise Network was formerly known as NFEA and is a trading name of the National Federation of Enterprise Agencies. Find out more at www.nationalenterprisenetwork.org or www.twitter.com/NatEntNet
2. Further information on the Get Mentoring project can be found at http://getmentoring.org
3. The Small Firms Development Initiative Limited (SFEDI) is the UK expert and Standards Setting Body for business enterprise and enterprise support. http://www.sfedi.co.uk