Building Futures | A Celebration of Young People

Young people are our future. Yet, it can be easy to overlook their incredible talents. We wanted to take a step back and make young people the stars of the show. Our Building Futures event fervently shone a light on the fantastic results young people are achieving through Young Enterprise programmes such as Fiver, 10X, Money Heroes, and Company Programme.

The UK is packed with millions of smart, talented, and hardworking young people who are passionate about creating a sustainable, kind, and caring world to live in. Yet for anyone looking from afar tales of a ‘lost covid generation’ would lead you to believe that there is little hope for the future.

So we decided to change the narrative and bring the focus back to young people themselves by celebrating their achievements. Unleashing untapped talent across the UK is something we pride ourselves on, so we invited Ben Francis, Founder of Gymshark, and Steph McGovern, TV presenter and financial journalist, to join us in our celebration and put a spotlight on this remarkable generation.

The challenges faced by young people at the moment are great. But so too is their initiative and creativity to overcome them.

That’s why we wanted to start a conversation showcasing the resilience, creativity, and ingenuity of young people. Only by fully understanding their extraordinary capabilities are we able to tailor our support in order to help them thrive and flourish in 2021 and beyond.

“When you read about Gymshark you read about the huge success, what you don’t get to read about are the seven websites that I started before Gymshark that failed miserably, you don’t read about the times where it was incredibly stressful and difficult to try and get the brand to grow.”

– Ben Francis Founder and incoming CEO of Gymshark

What can we do to celebrate the extraordinary achievements of young people in the face of a global pandemic which has had a disproportionate impact on young people? Put on an event all about them of course.

Through the inspiring conversations of the UK’s leading young entrepreneur Ben Francis and esteemed financial journalist Steph McGovern we dove deep into the incredible impact Young Enterprise has on lives across the UK. The celebration has further fuelled our desire to do everything in our power to support young people with the best enterprise and financial education possible, in order to help them tackle the ever changing world of work. With our brilliant speakers and hundreds of virtual attendees, it generated ideas, inspiration and motivation for a bright post-Covid future.