ONCE upon a time, former USA President George W Bush said, “The trouble with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur”.
But . . . hang on a minute, did he actually say it?
The answer, as you probably guessed, is, No, he didn’t.
The quote floats around the internet as ‘truth’, but I often use it as an example to explain to youngsters about checking facts.
Apparently, the Bush story can be traced back to a joke by Baroness Shirley Williams, founder of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Since then, it has taken on a life of its own in the great cloud of misinformation that exists on the internet.
The French do, of course, have a word for entrepreneur. And no prizes for guessing that it is ‘entrepreneur’.
According to the Oxford Review, the word entrepreneur originates from the 13th century French word ‘entreprendre’, which means to do something. By the 16th century this had become the noun entrepreneur, meaning someone who undertakes a business project or speculation.
History lesson over, I can now explain why the good folk of Llanelli are going to be hearing a lot more about the word entrepreneur over the next few months.
There have been plenty of stories over recent years branding Llanelli down-at-heel, with areas of deprivation and empty shops in the town centre.
But recent months have seen the growth of a new movement suggesting many of the town’s problems can be solved from within – by the local community and, in particular, by the younger generation.
Projects like Community Science, led by Dr Scott Griffiths, and the Llanelli Township Community Benefit Society are part of new ‘let’s help ourselves’ thinking.
And, in local education, Dr Felicity Healey-Benson, an entrepreneurial learning champion at the University of Wales Trinity St David, is helping teachers and pupils adopt new ways of learning and thinking.
Dr Healey-Benson explained some of her mission to develop new entrepreneurial thinking in schools to members of Llanelli Rotary Club this week.
She said: “They (pupils) have a community in their local area which is failing and is undernourished. There are changes happening around them which are causing depression.
“The town is dilapidated; people are feeling frustrated. They don’t feel that there’s a future for them.
“Now, it’s very easy to sit back and allow that pipeline of youth and intelligence to drift and move out of the town.
“We are working with schools to look at the curriculum and ways we can inspire our students to take advantage of a ‘living curriculum’ and go out and identify the problems in their local area and actually take those issues and use them as part of their projects.
“They can look for creative ways and be inspired to find their own solutions.
“They can work with mobilising resources to make use of what’s around them.
“It’s actually connecting the curriculum to what is happening about them, so they have the skill sets to be agents of change in their own environment.”
Dr Healey-Benson has already piloted ideas from the European Commission EntreComp project in Dafen school. Now she is rolling out her entrepreneurship ideas to other primary and secondary schools in the area.
They are big bold ideas which will, hopefully, give the youngsters of Llanelli ownership of the task of regenerating the town and help create a more resilient and sustainable community.
You can expect to hear more about Dr Healey-Benson’s work when Global Entrepreneurship Week comes around in November.
Watch this space!
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ACCORDING to the Head of the Household (aka the good lady wife, Mrs Lloyd), I’m only really happy these days when I’ve got something to moan about.
In which case (if only my dodgy knees would only allow it), I should be skipping around and singing a merry tune today – even if it is the dreaded Friday the 13th!
Regular readers will recall that, back in June, I was having a whinge about people who park on pavements.
On several occasions, tradesmen managed the difficult technical feat of putting all four wheels of their vans on the pavement outside my house.
I decided to report the matter to the police, assuming that our local Bobbies would be interested in a nice little open-and shut case of obstruction.
The answer came back from the local constabulary – ‘This incident would need to be reported to your local council, as the duty now lies with them to manage the road network.’
I didn’t have the energy or enthusiasm for spending a further three hours on the phone trying to find the correct council department to file a complaint. I reasoned that, by the time the council moved into gear, the vans would be long gone.
Last week, I noticed the newly-erected, very smart (and probably very expensive) digital bus stop sign at West End in Llanelli was out of order.
When it works, it should flash up the arrival time of the next bus to, say, Kidwelly or Carmarthen.
I reasoned that it would be best to complain to the First Cymru bus company and used the old Twitter platform they now call X. The response arrived quicker than the bus –
‘Thank you for reaching out! I am afraid stops/stations are under the local authority and not First Bus. Please reach out to your local authority to report this and they will be able to assist you.’
I did use the X platform to ‘reach out’ (the buzz phrase of the year, I suspect) to Carmarthenshire Council, but found that my X social media account must be ‘verified’ to communicate with the local authority.
Mrs L is delighted. She knows there could be hours of fun left in this latest moan!
Twitter: @rlloydpr
Email: robertlloydpr@rlloydpr.co.uk
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