Leeds appeals for mentors to help struggling businesses

Leeds City Council has called for an army of 500 business mentors to come forward and help local entrepreneurs deal with the impact of the coronavirus.

According to the local authority, the mentors could be recently retired or still working, but able to spare 45 minutes a week for online support, free of charge, for three months.

The mentorship programme will be led by Next-Up, which helps executives coming up to retirement.

They already have 32 mentors and 16 entrepreneurs signed up, so are allocating these immediately and calling for more mentors and more leaders who would like mentors, to contact them.

‘These are unprecedented times and we are doing everything we can to prepare and to mitigate the business and economic impact in the city,’ said Leeds City Council leader, Cllr Judith Blake.

‘As part of this, we are moving quickly to support innovative ideas that will help the sustainability of our region.

‘This initiative is adapting and extending one of our existing activities and will have far reaching impact. It is a fantastic way to maximise the skills of an experienced generation to help businesses, entrepreneurs, voluntary and public sector leaders at such a challenging time. Technology is enabling really imaginative ways to support each other and we are proud to support it,’ added Cllr Blake.

The chief executive of Next-Up, Victoria Tomlinson, added: ‘No-one has ever seen anything like COVID-19 and its speedy impact. However, my generation has lived through 9/11 and the financial crash – which at the time felt as awful.

‘What this generation can do is to help people get perspective, talk through things in a logical way with someone independent and use their skills, experience and contacts to help people make good decisions. And shortly, to start looking at longer term plans once the virus abates.’

Earlier this week, the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) revealed it has joined forces with councils to co-ordinate the local response to the economic impact of the coronavirus.

A new region-wide economic resilience group in Humber is now meeting weekly to pool information on the issues affecting businesses, share resources and ensure businesses can access support.

Photo Credit – Free-Photos (Pixabay)