Enterprising Students

Enterprising Students

Are you a student at Ayrshire College or have been a student in the past two years? Are you thinking about starting your own business? Do you need help writing a business plan? Do you need funding to help you get started or if you have already started, do you need funding to help you develop your business? If the answer is yes to these questions, we can help you with all of this. Read on to see what our Enterprising Students programme can offer you.

The Ayrshire College Foundation offers a programme of support and funding of grants up to £5000 for students of Ayrshire College who are interested in developing ideas to start up their own business. To help us inspire more students to be enterprising, we are working in partnership with Bridge 2 Business to support idea development.

You will be mentored by our Enterprise Executive at Bridge 2 Business, Laurenne Baird, to create a business plan, and access the support, training and advice available to develop a business idea.

You can select a Local Hero from the Bridge 2 Business programme as a mentor - https://bridge2business.org.uk/heroes.php

Bridge to Business have a wide variety of support partners that are available to advise and support you on your journey to self-employment.

We will invite support partners to all our future enterprise events future events, and referrals can be arranged to connect you with them at one to one meetings and training workshops.

Once you join our Enterprising Students programme you can access FREE online Digital Skills Training Courses offered by Accenture (9 in total).

You can apply for the £100 “Test the market” – grant from Bridge 2 Business – available via application to the Enterprise Executive at Bridge 2 Business.

We will help you organise a FREE Market stall to promote and sell business products and ideas to customers – in collaboration with our support partners, Royal Bank of Scotland branches.

To join our Enterprising Students Programme complete a Student Enquiry form

Forward the application form to: stuart.millar@ayrshire.ac.uk

We will then set up an appointment with Laurenne Baird our Programme Executive and you will receive one to one mentoring and training through a series of meetings and workshops.

We will help you complete training workshops to develop your business skills with external support partners including Business Gateway and The Prince’s Trust.

You will complete a student development tracker to monitor your progress and achievements and this lets us see your commitment and determination to succeed.

You can complete FREE digital skills training courses with Accenture (9 in total).

Over time you will work on your business plan and cash flow documents with the Programme Executive at Bridge 2 Business. Once you are both happy with it, you submit it to stuart.millar@ayrshire.ac.uk and your plan will be presented to the Enterprising Students panel for consideration for funding. Please note that funding is not guaranteed.

There is an initial application submission stage, where the panel will then select the students who have been successful in securing an interview to discuss funding. At this stage you may also be given constructive feedback with suggestions on how to improve your business plan, should you wish to resubmit.

The deadline for applications will be April, June and September. Successful students will be notified by email on the next stage to attend an interview with the panel.

Following the panel interview - students will receive a letter from the chair of the panel advising on the outcome of their application.