No ceiling to what I can do: campaign delivers job-winning skills for 400
David Cohen talks to some of the young Londoners who have reaped the rewards
MORE than 400 jobless young Londoners have been upskilled and over 200 have secured jobs or apprenticeships thanks to our Skill Up Step Up campaign.
In a panel discussion this week at the Canary Wharf HQ of Barclays, which backed our two-year initiative with a £1 million donation, once unemployed youths told a 100-strong audience how their lives had been transformed. “I know now that I am enough,” said one. “I feel there is no ceiling on what I can do,” said another. “I used to feel despair but now I have hope,” added a third.
Our scheme, launched 15 months ago in partnership with The Independent and the Barclays LifeSkills programme, addressed the conundrum of 20 per cent youth unemployment in London in the wake of the pandemic at a time of record job vacancies of 1.2 million countrywide — and it did so by tackling the skills gap and upgrading the competencies of the jobless.
Duro Oye, chief executive of 2020 Change, who along with City Gateway, Springboard, Resurgo and First Rung, has been funded to provide empowerment training to disadvantaged youth as well as entrées to employers, chaired the panel discussion. He said: “Many youths who come to us have finished school and gone to university, but they don’t know how to navigate the corporate space. Our job is to equip them with the skills and network to complete the last mile. It is also about changing their mindset to believe they can succeed in white collar jobs.”
Jess Jones of Nando’s, one of over 100 employers who have supported our campaign by hiring upskilled youth, said the high quality of candidates had been borne out by “the great labour retention levels” of those they hired. Kate Markey, of The London Community Foundation which managed the initiative, said the “extreme inequality between haves and have-nots” in the capital “compelled us to act”.
IN this challenging economic atmosphere, upskilling and apprenticeships are key to getting young people into work. So the Evening Standard is thrilled to announce that 200 jobless young Londoners have secured jobs or apprenticeships thanks to our Skill Up Step Up campaign.
The scheme, launched 15 months ago in partnership with Barclays LifeSkills, sought to address the mismatch between high youth unemployment in the capital at the same time as widespread vacancies. It did so by tackling the skills gap and helping young people to upgrade their competencies.
Our huge thanks go to our partners, but most of all our congratulations to the hundreds of young people who took a chance, enhanced their skills and are now on track to achieve everything they want in their careers.