A decade-long celebration of entrepreneurship in county
Image 1 of 3
The members of the Meath Enterprise board of directors celebrating 15 years in operation at the Navan Enterprise Centre in 2013 were (front, from left): Pauline Baker, Cllr Joe Reilly and Cllr Sinead Burke; (back, from left): Cllr Francis Deane, Michael Moran, Cllr Tommy Reilly, Kevin Stewart, Cllr Shane Cassells, Gary O’Meara, Pat Coogan and Fiona Lawless.Image 2 of 3
Kevin Stewart, Meath County Council; Joe English, Meath Local Enterprise Office (LEO) and Gary O’Meara, Meath Enterprise, at the Meath Enterprise Week 2018 Business Conference and Expo at Knightsbrook Hotel, Trim.Image 3 of 3
Meath Enterprise Week (MEW), Ireland’s longest-running county enterprise showcase and celebration of entrepreneurship, takes place this year from 13th to 17th November.
It is a decade since the first staging of the week-long event, which aims to promote and drive entrepreneurial development within County Meath.
This year’s MEW will centre on two main events: the annual Student Enterprise Challenge, the annual competition which takes place between schools where students compete to win a cash prize for the best startup or established business, and best new business idea or concept.
The second is the launch of a new book looking at the long and illustrious history of furniture-making and carpet-making in Navan through the 20th century. The publication, ‘Of Wood & Wool’, will be launched in the Meath Enterprise Centre, Trim Road, Navan, on Thursday 16th November.
The origins of Meath Enterprise Week lie in a 2013 collaboration between Meath Enterprise, Bank of Ireland and Kells Chamber of Commerce who collectively hosted a Kells Business and Jobs Expo at the Kells Enterprise and Technology Centre.
This event, which saw over 60 local business exhibitors take part and an attendance of 500 people, was a huge success and inspired Meath Enterprise to launch the inaugural Meath Enterprise Week (MEW) in November 2014.
The week-long business expo in 2014 was the first major trade fair-type event of its kind to be staged in Meath in over three decades and consisted of a series of enterprise talks, seminars, workshops, advice clinics, demonstrations and training courses in locations such as Navan, Kells, Trim and Ashbourne which focused in particular on the themes of Digital, Food and Women in Business.
Culminating in a Meath Business Showcase and Conference at Trim’s Knightsbrook Hotel in November 2014, the week concluded with an expo of over 60 stands and a conference where the speakers included the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, TD; Brendan Jennings, managing director at Deloitte, and Tara McCarthy, director of food & beverage in Bord Bia, among others.
The expo and conference was attended by the main state agencies and business support groups in addition to companies which at that time were leading the way in both the food and digital sectors.
In the years since that inaugural showcase, Meath Enterprise Week has grown in scope and stature and now takes place annually in collaboration with Global Entrepreneurship Week, a worldwide celebration of entrepreneurship that occurs in mid-November each year. During Global Entrepreneurship Week, people from various countries worldwide come together through local, national and global events in an effort to create solutions for worldwide economic growth.
Gary O’Meara, CEO of Meath Enterprise and managing director of the Global Entrepreneurship Network in Ireland, said Global Entrepreneurship Week is aimed at celebrating and empowering entrepreneurs in Ireland and many other countries around the world, especially those who may never have considered launching a startup or who face structural barriers in doing so.
“Knowing the importance of entrepreneurship to global economic advancement, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in the United States created Global Entrepreneurship Week. Since then, it has grown from a series of events in the US and UK only to expanding to over 165 countries,” he said.