What's happening? Next steps for The Bank of TMC.

The last three months or so have been a really key period in the development of The Bank. We've been able to:

• support to our first 5 social enterprises to complete their business planning, register their new businesses and start trading
• raise the quality of our business development support, communications and marketing, by bringing on board new delivery partners
• extend our work with our Mighty Teams of young advocates and young investors 
• adapt our 'offer' and build our networks to work with young people who are not in education, employment or training, or who are at risk of being so
• work with consultants to create our 'case for support' to attract donors and philanthropists to support the Bank
• complete our plans for the wider 'roll-out' of The Bank of TMC in 2012

Central to this progress has been our new partnership working, which has enabled us to focus on the quality of our programme, particularly as it relates to the business development and mentoring offered to young social entrepreneurs. We've worked closely with Kate Cowan from Spring to Action to devise the bespoke programme of development, support, mentoring, training and inspiration that will be available to our new cohort of young entrepreneurs from March 2012.

In addition, we have also brought on board Louisa Day from digital communications agency Herdl and freelance whizz Adil Jaffer to collaborate with our team of young advocates on a new suite of marketing tools that will help The Bank 'speak' directly to our different target audiences - inspiring young people to get involved; explaining the benefits and possibilities to teachers, youth workers, parents, community activists, volunteers and all the other people in Leicester Shire we need to reach.

Our 'Ideas Generation' strand taking place in February, will give us the chance to test the thinking behind our revised programme of support, working with young people who are NEET and the agencies who support them including Connexions and Youth Offending / Probation Teams.

January and February will see the interim reports from our first group of young social entrepreneurs - their chance to let us know how their businesses are making money, empowering people and communities and trading responsibly.

Between now and March, the team will continue to develop our work on fundraising and promoting our offer, with a particular focus on how we can extend our collaborative work with the Mighty Teams of young people that help lead the Bank of TMC and inspire their peers. While there is much to be done and many challenges coming our way through austerity and general down-heartedness, we feel that we can continue to make a positive difference for and with young people.