Education United Kingdom Project #37081

Careers Inspiration For Every Child

by Form the Future CIC

Project Report | Sep 9, 2021
Back to school - and beyond

By Anne Bailey | CEO

Young adult taking part in workshop

It's September so it's back to school here in the UK, and our work in schools has restarted with our first event for year 11 students this week. After a year of delivering many of our services online, we're back in classrooms again and it's great to be face to face with students. We have 100 events planned for this school year already - and expect to add even more as the year progresses.

We're also seeing demand from young people who've left education but still find themselves at a loss when it comes to starting a career. Form the Future has been visiting JobCentres to provide young jobseekers with essential employability skills, building their confidence and showing them how to find a job that plays to their strengths. A report from the UK government's Public Accounts Committee this week revealed the soaring unemployment rates for young people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, at three times the rate of young white people. We're trying to make sure our support is going where it's needed most. Here's what Maica, one of the unemployed young people we're working with, told us:

"I didn't get any careers support at school and I didn't enjoy my degree or my time at uni, which is why I left. My Form the Future advisor was the first person who really understood me and helped me see what I could do. I'm applying for jobs now, know exactly what I need to do and I feel a lot more confident about my future."

There are lots more like Maica who need our support, and we're doing everything we can to help. Our goal is to start working with children when they're still at school to instil confidence and self-belief but we are also ready to help those who've missed out. This year, we have plans to reach over 1,000 young adults.

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May 12, 2021
Latest news from Form the Future CIC

By Anne Bailey | CEO

Students working on team work experience challenge

As things start to open up in the UK after more than a year in and out of lockdowns, we look forward to delivering services to children face to face. While it's going to be gradual - some of our STEM company partners aren't ready to run project days at their premises until 2022 - the good news is that we've discovered how much we can do through virtual engagement.

At the end of April, we ran a week of virtual work experience at one of our partner schools in Peterborough. We worked with Nene Park Academy to provide 195 year 10 students with five days meeting employers from five different companies: MetroBank (banking), Morgan Sindall (construction), Marshall Aerospace & Defence (engineering), Cambridge University Press (publishing), and Anglian Water (utility). Each company set a challenge for the students to complete in teams and present back to the employers. After a year when very few students got the chance to spend time in a workplace or meet people beyond their families, it was an eye-opening and rewarding experience. We now hope to offer this programme to schools across our region and hope that hundreds more students will benefit this summer.

We also ran our first online virtual careers fair for 16-19 year olds, with over 400 students, from some 30 different schools. 42 companies took stalls in our virtual exhibition space or joined discussions covering topics like apprenticeships and starting your own business. The most popular session was run by Form the Future's own careers advisors called "What to do if you don't know what to do." This tells us how important it is that we're reaching out to young people now to help them navigate an uncertain future.

Form the Future has strengthened during lockdown. While we may not have reached the usual large numbers of students, we have kept going, providing services virtually, which has allowed us to connect with schools and young people outside of our usual area. We will continue to offer online services so that we can continue to expand our reach, even while we restart our in-person activities.

Young people may not have suffered physically, but lockdown has taken its toll on their learning and their confidence. We are ready to do whatever we can to help them rebuild and grow, preparing them for their future and helping them enjoy the journey.

Thank you for helping to make our work possible.

Kind regards

Anne Bailey

CEO, Form the Future CIC

Links:

Virtual work experience

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Jan 4, 2021
Wrapping up 2020, looking ahead to 2021

By Anne Bailey | CEO

I'm writing this on the first day of 2021 and my thoughts are less about looking back and more about moving forward. But it's worth reflecting on 2020 which was a challenging year for so many. Our work has always involved working directly in schools or bring school students into businesses so when the pandemic led to lockdowns we needed to completely rethink our delivery model. Fortunately, we're big fans of technology and were quick to adapt. And while elements of what we do are lost - 3000 work experience placements were cancelled - there are gains, too, as digital delivery transcends time and space allowing us to reach new beneficiaries.

Highlights from the last quarter of 2021 include our Annual Conference, with distinguished educators, Professor Anna Vignoles and Oli de Botton, informing and inspiring more than 150 delegates from business, education and the civic sectors. We were also joined by business leaders, Jane Paterson-Todd, Alex Hughes and Naily Makangu, and local and national politicians, Cllr Neil Gough and Anthony Browne MP. Events like this remind us that our work is only possible with the full support of our community.

We occupy a unique place at the intersection between learners / future employees and businesses with job opportunities and a need for skilled labour and we enter 2021 knowing that our work has never been more needed. Young people and those furthest from the labour market have been hit hardest by the economic downturn. We need to redouble our efforts to protect a generation from long-term economic scarring.

The good news is that Form the Future has survived this far. We've added staff and developed new tools, built new partnerships and we believe we're in a strong position to provide exactly what's needed right now.

But like every non-profit, we must continue to raise funds to deliver our services. Your support means so much to us. Thanks for all you've given in the past. Please consider us for your donations in 2021.

Best wishes for a healthy and happier 2021.

Anne Bailey

CEO, Form the Future CIC

Links:

Attachments:

Article in local media on annual conference (PDF)

2 Attachments

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