A support and encouragement network for young entrepreneurs that started as a project at a Stirling high school three years ago has held its first "global summit" in Abu Dhabi.
Bruce Walker, 20, who had the idea for youth-oriented start-up support network We Are The Future when a pupil at Wallace High School, has held high-profile events in Edinburgh and San Francisco. He told the Sunday Herald that last week's two-day Idea Factory at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre had brought together 200 people from schools and colleges across the United Arab Emirates. The purpose was to "share stories about how they got started", take part in specialist sessions and organise pitching competitions, with the winners being awarded a session with a local business growth specialist, Innovation 360.
Walker said the surprise of the Abu Dhabi seminar, which is set to be followed by similar events for young entrepreneurs in Switzerland, Germany, China and Scotland over the course of 2015, was that "around 60%" of the 200 young participants in the moderately conservative Muslim emirate were women and girls.
"Emirati men tend to go into paid jobs, whereas the women tend to have to make their own way, which is why so many are interested in entrepreneurship" he said.
We Are The Future, which has received a £70,000 two-year grant for work in schools from the Scottish Government, organised the event, billed as "the start of the movement to create a world-class entrepreneurial hub in Abu Dhabi", in association with Abu Dhabi University.
It has received royal support and patronage from the emirate's youth minister Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan
Speakers included Nilanjan Ray of NBAD Commercial Banking, venture capitalist Mohamed Hamdy and Scots investment speaker Russell Dalgleish, talking about banking, investment management and entrepreneurial start-up funding.
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