Barclays has partnered with UK
TV’s Channel 4 and is offering £100,000 to encourage young
individuals to pitch business ideas. Barclays head of consumer and
community affairs Michelle Smith and Channel 4 Education
commissioning editor Jo Twist speak to Meghna Mukerjee about online
competition, The Stake
Go deeper with GlobalData
A total of £100,000 ($158,000) is up for grabs and up to six
young individuals can lay claims to the money through The
Stake.
Barclays is investing the prize money
for winners of The Stake – an online competition that will
roll out in a TV show format – in association with Channel 4, as
part of the initiative to infuse good money skills among the youth
segment.
This is the first time Barclays has
partnered with a major TV organisation and made what it calls a
“big foray into an online competition for young people”.
Barclays believes it is “going to
inspire young people to build their business and their enterprise
skills and build their money along the way,” says the head of
consumers and community affairs for Barclays, Michelle Smith.
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By GlobalDataThe Stake encourages young
individuals, between the ages of 16 and 21 years, to submit an
entrepreneurial idea. Up to six individuals can each win a maximum
of £20,000 to turn their ideas into reality.
There are two ways for young people to
take part in The Stake – by submitting an idea themselves
or by registering as a stakeholder and vote for the ideas they
think should win.
To pitch an idea, participants need to
summarise it in 118 characters so that it can be tweeted with the
hash tag and URL.
The Stake format is game-like
and participants can take challenges and unlock their votes for
other contestant’s ideas.
Barclays already has a separate
programme, Barclays Money Skills, which focuses on encouraging the
youth to build their financial capabilities and knowledge for
effective money management, and The Stake fits in
perfectly with the agenda.
Smith says Barclays has done “an awful
lot of research” to understand the best ways to reach out to the
youth through the Money Skills programme, and the lender recognises
online activity is an “important place where young people come to
learn and grow”.
The challenges for ‘stakeholders’ on
The Stake are based on the Barclays Money Skills programme
and designed to build their financial knowledge and skills.
Smith says when the opportunity came
up for Barclays to work on The Stake with Channel 4 and
Livity – a youth engagement agency that conceptualised the project
– Barclays readily took it up.
Barclays believes The Stake
is a platform for young people to “not only win a chunk of money to
make a difference by creating a business or a community project in
their area, but atually, on the way, learn some skills around money
management, business building capabilities and the business skills
they might need to bring those ideas to life”.
The business ideas have to be
submitted online by 23 December, after which 20 individuals with
the best ideas will be shortlisted. Film crews will be following
the contestant’s stories.
Contestants are encouraged to register
their friends and “get the debate going so that the ideas are as
strong as they possibly can be by the December deadline”, explains
Smith.
TV spots for The Stake are
already on air and Jo Twist, commissioning editor for Channel 4
Education, says it will “hopefully make a lot of kids and teenagers
want to get involved”.
“For The Stake we just wanted
an idea that would help young people improve their financial
literacy,” Twist adds.
“A lot of young people don’t know how
to manage their own money and it’s not something that schools
particularly teach you very well.
“Originally it was supposed to be
setting up a bank for teenagers and run by teenagers, but we
quickly realised that would be impossible.
“Livity came back to us with Barclays
as a potential financial partner and they have this huge Money
Skills programme, which is all about teaching young people about
money skills like making a basic budget.”
Channel 4 has “used Barclays’
expertise” to develop the online challenges for The Stake,
says Twist, adding that it is “a bit like a cross between a kick
starter and strategic game play”.
Smith says this is the first of its
kind of community investment activity that Barclays has done, and
the project is “pretty groundbreaking” for the lender.
“We are not funding the show – all the
money we are providing is going specifically to the ideas generated
through the project and obviously we are deploying a lot of
resources behind it.”
Barclays will be involved in the panel
that shortlists the top 20 contestants, alongside executives from
Channel 4 Education.
Expert advice will be provided to the
shortlisted candidates throughout The Stake competition,
and Barclays CEO of retail and business banking, Antony Jenkins,
will be one of the mentors for the contestants.
Other mentors will include UK’s
digital champion Martha Lane Fox, The Apprentice winner
Tim Campbell, SB.TV founder Jamal Edwards and MP Esther McVey.
Barclays will also be opening up
opportunities for its senior management to get involved with
The Stake and “regional directors across the business are
very happy to participate and share their skills with young people
at the entry level”, says Smith.
“It really depends on what the
individual needs for the project but it might well be about
actually how they take that concept and think about what it will
take to bring that into reality,” adds Smith.
Beyond The Stake, Barclays is
involved in a number of ventures ranging from “online activity to
projects like The Stake down to working with some of the
most disadvantaged young people through our project with Action for
Children”, says Smith.
The other area that Barclays is
focusing on with Money Skills is encouraging further college
education among the youth, in association with National Skills
Academy for Financial Services.
“We recognise there is a gap and it is
a really important time where young people are thinking about
earning money for the first time, thinking about their careers,”
says Smith.
“They are thinking about their own
homes or how they are going to get to that point of making really
important life decisions.”
Barclays is also in the piloting
stages of developing 5,000 Barclays Money Skills champions – a
project that will roll out in 2012.
“I think the important thing to
recognise is you can’t just do one thing,” says Smith.
