Magdalene Adenaike, chief executive of Music Relief Foundation, explains why the business should win the Startup of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
Music Relief Foundation was formed in January 2015. We are a service-based organisation, running experiential creative workshops for our target audience – youths and young women 13-30 years old. We aim to build confidence and self esteem through music therapy.
We started a marketing campaign to engage with the women in the local community, providing opportunities for them to meet on a monthly basis to share ideas, support each other, and encouraging them to sign up to newsletter for further information to help them to start their own business.
We also started a weekly Periscope account. The short films are a way for us to pass on knowledge, engage with the wider audience and highlight issues that are affecting and limiting people from achieving their aspirations. This has led to the number of our Twitter followers doubling and we have also now set up our Instagram account. We recruited our first employee as a Digital Marketing Apprentice, working to promote the business even more online.
As the CEO of Music Relief, I have also been awarded the BE MOGUL 2016 award, in recognition of the rising entrepreneurs within the African and Caribbean communities.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
