So now after 38 years we have 81,000 businesses that have been started by the Trust, 750,000 young people have been helped in one way or another to turn their lives around, literally.
Ladies and gentlemen, I must say I am so glad to have this opportunity to see so many of you here this evening. I do hope you are also intrigued by coming to this remarkable venue here because, believe it or not, I have never been here either! So it's a great treat for me to see this remarkable place and to know that also just by being here this evening we're contributing a little bit more to the legal profession...
But Ladies and Gentlemen above all else, I wanted to thank all of you for giving up your precious time for being here this evening because I know what incredibly busy lives you lead, and the fact that so many of you have apparently seen the point about my Prince's Trust is remarkable. I suspect quite a lot of you might have been persuaded, by having your arms pulled up behind you back to be here, but nevertheless I hope this evening you find out a little bit more about what my Trust tries to do.
If I may say so, I'm particularly proud of the fact that over the last, since 2002, we've had these Leadership Groups which, as many of you know, have made a fantastic difference to my Trust. For instance the Technology Leadership Group, which has 48 members, has raised £17 million since 2002 and aims to raise £2.2 million this year. The Internet and Media Group has raised over £3 million since 2010, and is aiming to raise £1.1 million this year. The Construction and Business Services raised £5.4 million since 2006, the Retail Sector £5 million since 2009, and we must not forget the enormous contribution made by the Financial Services Sector, which this year will represent the largest ever proportion of The Prince's Trust income - in other words - £12 million thanks to HSBC, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays.
So the fact that so many of you see the point of what we are trying to do to help more and more young people is immensely appreciated, and makes a fantastic difference to their lives. I am sure you know, better than anybody, just what an enormous challenge there is out there with so many young people unemployed. It always seems to me such a particular tragedy in many ways that we don't succeed so well in joining up the dots in terms of the skills that young people need. For instance, when I discovered via the Academy of Engineering that this country needs 69,000 Level 2 Engineering Apprentices ever year for the next 10 years, and they are only getting 27,000 then there is an enormous additional challenge that isn't being met. And you can say the same thing for many other industries, particularly where vocational skills are required.
I discovered the other day that there's a company for instance in Hinckley in Leicestershire, which is in the textile sector, and they become increasingly frustrated that they can't recruit British apprentices, people from here and school leavers to work in their factories on machines. The have got big contracts but they have to get people from overseas. Everywhere I go in the United Kingdom I hear the same sort of thing. And as far as I am concerned, the Trust, my Trust plays a hugely important role, I think, in helping to develop an interest in those kinds of vocational skills that are so badly needed. For instance, we have programmes to enable young people to see whether they have an aptitude or not for particular skills, and that so often leads on to becoming apprentices and then having an opportunity or even starting their own business.
I don't know about you but I get so enthused and encouraged by the fact that after 38 years I suppose of The Prince's Trust, I now bump into endless different people, some of them getting rather old, who started off in business quite a long time ago who have made a real success of life. I bumped into one man the other day who told me that 20 years ago we started him off business, and he has now gone on and is worth something like half a billion pounds because he moved into property after we started him off in another business.
There was a remarkable young man who I came across the other day called Duane Jackson who had spent four years in prison and came out, obviously as you can imagine, in real difficultly, but he approached the Trust because in prison he learnt an awful lot on the computer. He developed a company called KashFlow which he sold the other day for tens of millions of pounds, ten years after he started it off at the age of 20 or something. And we are finding more and more people like that.
So now after 38 years we have 81,000 businesses that have been started by the Trust, 750,000 young people have been helped in one way or another to turn their lives around, literally. I get letters from all sorts of people who have been helped by my Trust who say in their letters that 'I would have committed suicide' or 'I would have kept on drugs' or whatever if it hadn't been for the Trust helping them to find a way out of an appalling vicious circle that they got into. A lot of them have become Prince's Trust Ambassadors so they go on to help other people. We have Job Ambassadors whose task it is to go into the most difficult areas of the country where all the not-in-employment or educational training people tend to be, and help to work with them to suggest that they might try something else in their live. So those Job Ambassadors are exactly the kind of people you need to go to explain to others, because they have come from the same situation, how they can actually turn their lives around. That is making a big difference.
So this year we aim to help 58,000 young people and I'm afraid to say it costs the Trust, well, we need to raise £1 million pounds each week or more to be able to make this difference. Not only in this country but increasingly internationally, because we are now finding people from other countries are coming to my Trust wanting to find a way of replicating what we've been doing here all these years, because they have finally realised they have a real problem on youth unemployment. And so they realise that perhaps we might be able to help them deal with some of these issues to create enterprise and opportunity and so on. As you can imagine it isn't easy to be able to help all these young people without the kind of support that incredibly generous people like you, Ladies and Gentlemen, can provide.
I am particular grateful to the team at The Prince's Trust, there are now nearly 1,000 of them who can help to make a difference to people's lives - with your support. And again, if it wasn't for the kind sponsors for instance like tonight EMC who have unbelievably generously, for the fourth year in a row, helped us arrange this dinner, we would get nowhere. I am also hugely grateful to James Bennett and the event committee for putting on this enormous event here this evening. Also to Katie Derham, who has been involved as a Prince's Trust Ambassador for 15 years now, and she was only 18 when she started. I'm also very grateful to Richard Scudamore, the Chief Executive of the Premier League, who has come this evening to talk to you later on. We have had a relationship now with the Premier League for 17 years, which I think has made a fantastic difference, working with the football clubs all around the country. And as you can imagine so many people respond to the whole business of football they can get many more people involved than I can! So I am very grateful to Richard Scudamore.
And of course you are going to hear later from Catriona Glover who is a Prince's Trust Ambassador. She will tell you from her point of view, what a difference the Trust has made to her. It's much better to hear from her than it is from me! Just remember finally, Ladies and Gentlemen, each year youth unemployment costs the economy billions of pounds in benefits and lost productivity, and youth crime and anti-social behaviour costs millions per week. So what you are doing to help my Trust tackle some of these issues, I cannot tell you, it is incalculable. So please, rest assured that your support will make a fantastic difference.
Thank you so much.
