Enterprising students complete Entrée programme

Students who recently completed an innovative new Entrepreneurship Training Programme (Entrée) at the Belfast Institute have been awarded with certificates.

The awards were made at a celebration event in the Gerald Moag Campus at Millfield, where local businessman Jas Mooney presented the successful students with their certificates.

The ‘Entrée’ programme, funded through Proteus by the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation, is delivered in partnership with the Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship and Business in the Community.

The programme enables students to gain confidence to enter the world of work and to think about the range of career options open to them in employment and self-employment. Highlighting opportunities to be creative and enterprising in a range of settings, Entrée has assisted students to develop entrepreneurial and enterprising skills.

During the 15-week programme the students acquired skills such as confidence and assertiveness, communication and listening, networking, creative thinking, time management and team building.

Project Co-ordinator for the Entrée Programme, Marie Woods, said: “Students on the course have developed a range of entrepreneurial skills which I am confident will not only increase their employability in the short term but also point them in the right direction in terms of starting up a business in the longer term. We are currently recruiting for the next intake of students who will commence in October 2005 and already interest is very high”.

Over a period of two years it is expected that 96 students will benefit from the Entrée Programme.

Further start dates for the programme will take place in October 2005 and February 2006.

With the aim of promoting and embedding an entrepreneurial ethos across the Belfast Institute to embed entrepreneurship within the FE sector at grass roots levels, Entree is one of the key themes arising out of the Institute’s Development Plan for 2004 – 2007.

For further information, contact the Belfast Institute on tel: 028 9026 5000.

(SP/MB)