The two year programme, fully-funded by SEEDA (South East England Development Agency) and the European Regional Development Fund, enables local businesses professionals to meet in confidence for a series of guided ‘peer-group’ meetings, with invited corporate representatives acting as hosts for the programme of monthly seminars and meetings.
There are two regional PLATO groups across the County, an East Kent group and a Thames Gateway group. Morag Welham, Head of Special Interest and Media at KM Group, will be working together with Pfizer representative Andy Gibson to co-facilitate the East Kent group. The Thames Gateway group is being hosted by Coca Cola and Aylesford Newsprint.
KM Group accepted the hosting invitation from PLATO: Sustain after being named as “Environmental Newspaper Company of the Year” in The 2009 Newspaper Awards and to further its support of the local business community. This compliments the group's many other business support initiatives such as staging the Kent Excellence in Business Awards (KEiBA) and sponsoring the Environmental Awards for Kent Business.
About PLATOGB
PLATOGB says: “PLATOGB Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Enterprise Alliance. PLATOGB provides programmes which focus on the owners, leaders and decision makers within small and medium sized businesses, enabling them to develop and enhance leadership and business skills and knowledge which will make a positive difference to their business.”
About Kent Business
KM Group says: “Kent Business was established in 1993 and is circulated monthly with select editions of the Kent Messenger series (including Medway Messenger), Kentish Express series and Kentish Gazette Group. An online counterpart, www.kentbusiness.co.uk, was launched in December 2008 and a news feed on Twitter currently has 170 followers.”
