College takes successful self employment programme to Dundee

Due to high demand, Carnegie College’s highly successful Self Employment programmes are expanding from their locations in Fife into Tayside. Started and run from the college’s Access Centre in Methil, the programmes were developed to provide unemployed people with the knowledge to enable them to start and run their own businesses. As Rose Duncan, Assistant Head of School for Access & Communities at Carnegie College explained, “With partners such as Jobcentre Plus in Dundee and Skills Development Scotland (Tayside), we are very pleased that we are now able to offer the Self Employment Training for Work programme in Tayside from 22 June.” The course will be based in the SQA Suite in Dundee & Angus Chamber of Commerce at City Quay in Camperdown Street. Chief Executive of Dundee & Angus Chamber of Commerce, Alan Mitchell, said “We are delighted that the SQA Suite is the venue for this initiative. This region’s next generation of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders could come from this innovative programme, and it seems appropriate that the local chamber of commerce should play a part in it. We wish all of the course participants great success in their business ventures and we look forward to working with them all as members of the Chamber for many years to come.” The team in Dundee hope to replicate the success of the Self Employment programmes in Levenmouth, where over the past 10 years, the self employment team has helped an average of 50 unemployed people a year start their own business. This has led to the creation of over 1,000 jobs, some businesses now with turnovers of over 1 million pounds. Rose concluded, “While it is devastating to lose your job, for whatever reason, many people see this as an opportunity to take their lives in a different direction. Perhaps they have come up with an idea for a new business but never had the time to take it further due to work commitments, or to look into the risks and implications of starting up their own business. On our programmes we provide every participant with a dedicated Business Advisor who will initially discuss the viability of ideas and develop a business plan, and make them aware of issues such as sales forecasting, taxation and national insurance and selling on the intranet.” Anyone interested in Self Employment programmes at Carnegie should contact their local Jobcentre to check eligibility.