Dragons’ Glen

Scotland's Entrepreneurial Challenge for Business

The challenge: as a team, develop an idea and establish a business using £500 seed funding from Children 1st whilst being mentored by a top Scottish business leader.

The goal: compete to generate £5k, or more, in just five months to help vulnerable children throughout Scotland.

Why get involved:

  • Develop your employees skills set at no cost
  • Expose your employees to some of Scotland’s top business leaders
  • Inspire, motivate and unite employees through working to help a great cause
  • Demonstrate your company’s social responsibility
  • Gain new opportunities to network across business sectors
  • The perfect entrepreneurial challenge for graduates and trainees

95% of participants would recommend Dragons' Glen to their colleagues
95% of participants saw an improvement in networking skills
86% of participants saw improvement in strategic thinking*

*Dragons’ Glen 2018/19 survey

“Dragons’ Glen gives our graduates an opportunity to put learned commercial and personal skills into practice through entrepreneurship.”

- Debbie MacLeod, Graduate Programme Manager, SSE

Dragons' Glen has raised £472k since 2012! Hear what some of our previous participants thought about taking part:

How does the challenge work?

Register: sign up for your company to enter a Dragons’ Glen team

  • Recruit: select a team of 6-10 employees to be part of your Dragons’ Glen team
  • Kick off: Summer months – all teams will be invited to a brief presentation about Children 1st and the work that we do in Scotland, as well as learn about taking part in the Dragons’ Glen challenge
  • Plan: September – Following the launch teams plan their entrepreneurial idea to pitch to the Dragons early October
  • Pitch: October – Teams experience the heat of the Dragons’ Glen when they present a formal pitch and are put under the spotlight by our panel of Dragons
  • Challenge kicks off: Mid October – The Dragons will keep in touch with each team, keeping an eye on progress
  • Goal achieved: Mid March – The Challenge ends and all funds raised are transferred to Children 1st by the end of March
  • Celebrate: Mid April – A celebratory awards ceremony and networking event for teams and key contacts who have supported them.

Breathing fire into corporate social responsibility

I recently had the opportunity to lead a team of 10 colleagues from the EY Edinburgh office as part of #Dragons' Glen, Scotland's entrepreneurial

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