Opportunity and Enterprise
The Prince of Wales has for many years tried, through his charities, to help people fulfil their talent and potential, whether by supporting disadvantaged young men and women through the work of The Prince’s Trust and The Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust (PSYBT) or by providing assistance to older people through his charity PRIME (The Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise) the only national organisation dedicated to helping people aged over 50 set up in business.
The Prince’s Trust
The Prince's Trust exists to help young people overcome barriers and get their lives working.
Through practical support including training, mentoring and financial assistance, it helps 14 to 30-year-olds realise their potential and transform their lives.
The Trust focuses its efforts on young people who have struggled at school, have been in care, are long-term unemployed or have been in trouble with the law.
Since the charity was founded by The Prince of Wales in 1976, it has helped 550,000 young people. The Prince's Trust has operations in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and every English region. Click here to visit The Prince's Trust website.
The Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust
The sole aim of The Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust (PSYBT) is to help young people in Scotland aged between 18 and 25, however challenging their background, achieve their full potential through self-employment with the provision of a comprehensive support package of prestart counselling, funding and an extensive aftercare programme.
This support package is delivered via 17 regional offices and over 600 volunteers who act as panel members and aftercare advisers. Since The Trust was launched in 1989, over 8,200 young people have been helped to start around 6,900 businesses. Click here to visit the PSYBT website.
PRIME and PRIME-Cymru
PRIME and PRIME-Cymru are the only UK organisations promoting and supporting self-employment and enterprise for people aged over-50 and were formed at the initiative of The Prince of Wales.
They raise awareness of enterprise among older people, campaign for improvments, signpost or provide free business start-up support, offer loans of last resort or guidance towards funding and undertake research into best practice.
PRIME and PRIME-Cymru offer the over-50s a route to financial independence, scope to use their experience and skills and a chance to contribute to their communities. Click here to visit the PRIME website and here to visit the PRIME-Cymru website.
The Prince’s Youth Business International
The Prince’s Youth Business International (YBI) is an international network of programmes that help disadvantaged young people to become entrepreneurs by providing business mentoring and funds.
Our network comprises 38 locally based, independent initiatives that adopt the YBI model to meet national needs and conditions.
Each local programme operates on three common principles: they support young people, typically aged between 18-30, who have a good business idea but who cannot obtain help elsewhere; they provide access to start-up funds in the form of a loan without the need for guarantees or collateral; and they provide the young entrepreneur with a volunteer business mentor and access to business networks.
Our goal is to build the size and the capabilities of the network to enable the programmes to help more young entrepreneurs start their own business.
The YBI network has helped to start over 90,000 successful new businesses which in turn have provided employment to hundreds of thousands of others. In 2007 the YBI network helped over 6,300 new entrepreneurs, achieving a three-year annual growth rate of 37 per cent.
YBI is part of The Prince’s Charities, a group of 20 not-for-profit organisations of which The Prince of Wales is President. YBI was founded in 1999 and became an independent organisation in 2008.
Click here to visit the website.