A CALIFORNIA-based company boss is appealing for help in putting together a training course like the one that changed his life in Bournemouth.

Stuart Wischhusen recently relocated to Santa Barbara after the profits of his company BPak360 grew 6,000-fold.

He told the Daily Echo earlier this year how he had been unemployed and drifting at the age of 19 until his mother saw an advert in the Echo for a sales course run by Wessex Training. The training, run only once in 1988, turned out to be life-changing.

Now Mr Wischhusen wants to set up a similar course for other people and has approached Bournemouth East MP Tobias Ellwood with the idea.

Speaking from California, Mr Wischhusen said: “He’s interested in looking at a proposal which contains the training programme that we’d be delivering, outlining the training programme and what it would cost.

“What I’m hoping to do is drum up some interest in local companies that would like to work with us to provide that training.”

He hopes to win funding from the Big Lottery and UK Trade and Investment.

“Once we get the outline and the plan rubber-stamped by Tobias Ellwood, he will then refer us to the right people to help us with funding,” Mr Wischhusen said.

“We need local companies that are in the training business to come forward and assist us in putting this thing together. It would make a huge difference to local people.”.

He is also interested in hearing from anyone who remembers the 1988 training course – and from young people who would benefit from a similar course. “There’s nothing in it for me. I want young people to get the chances that I did,” he said.

Mr Ellwood said: “I’m in full supp-ort of Stuart’s commitment to bring-ing sales training to the young and long-term unemployed in Dorset. There are almost 8,000 unemployed people in the Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership area, so anything that can help to reduce this and steer people onto a meaningful, worthwhile career path has my backing.”

Contact Beth Kendall at Liz Lean PR, beth@lizleanpr.co.uk