The organisation has grown from the two co-founders to a team of 10 - and it is recruiting. It has increased the network of employers who support its work with young people to over 1,000. It has given over 30,000 young people the chance to work with employers, all of them having the four or more encounters with employers that the evidence says makes it more likely they'll be employed or in higher education at age 19.
The team says:
There's a huge need for the work we do. We're lucky to have secured contracts that fund us to deliver most of what we do free of charge to schools and developed a network of brilliant business supporters who give their time so generously.
We look forward to deepening our relationship with our business partners and expanding our support to schools in the coming years.
Celebrating some recent success
Thanks again to everyone who helped us raise match funding to unlock a £75,000 grant. Because of election purdah we couldn’t name the funder but now we can: it’s The Careers & Enterprise Company. Funded by central government, they describe themselves as ‘the national network that connects schools and colleges, employers and career programme providers to create high-impact careers opportunities for young people.”
The Careers & Enterprise Company fund lets us expand our careers and enterprise activity, offering the support that local schools and businesses need including schools in neighbouring areas. We will provide 50 enterprise and employability skills events and additional support to students looking for work experience in mainstream and special schools.
We are also delighted that we will continue to deliver Signpost2Skills with funding from the Greater Cambridge City Deal – now the Greater Cambridge Partnership. Between these programmes – and with the support of our network of schools and businesses – we expect to help even more students in the coming year prepare for their future careers.
Inspiring the next generation
Our other major programme is Cambridge LaunchPad, which started as an engineering outreach programme for Marshall Group, but is now expanding into all aspects of STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths.) While it's open to boys and girls, we have a particular focus on getting more girls to continue to study STEM subjects at A level and beyond. We achieve this by giving young people age 8-18 the chance to take part in stimulating hands-on STEM activities led by young professionals from local STEM companies.
We’ve been meeting with lots of companies that want to get involved and we will be announcing a full list of Partners, Supporters and Associates later in the summer. The response has been fantastic but the more companies on board, the greater our impact can be. We want to lead the UK in the numbers of girls studying STEM A levels and hopefully pursuing STEM careers. If you'd like to learn more about Cambridge LaunchPad, contact Andy Rice.
Winners from the primary schools' competitions gathered at Babraham Institute to collect their awards in front of their parents.
Free training sessions
We’ve started a series of regular workshops led by Andy Rice offering tips on working with young people. Andy shares what he learned from working as a secondary school teacher. Here’s what Stephen Blackmore from Turners of Soham said about the session in May:
“Having worked with students through Form the Future for over two years I have managed to get through sessions and just about keep students engaged. Some go really well but some can be a struggle. Sometimes training helps confirm what you think you’re doing is right and hopefully plants new seeds in your mind. Well, this hour and a half was invaluable and has helped me gain many new ideas on engagement that I feel confident to use and look forward to doing so. I would encourage anyone who volunteers to take this session as its content and Andy’s delivery was excellent. It’s also great, being in my fifties, to learn new ideas and work and share experiences with other people from different business areas.”
Our next session is August 17th at the Future Business Centre and you can book here.
Mentoring
Since January, nearly 100 students from eight schools have been working with a volunteer mentor from the business community. Although most of these relationships will continue into next year, we need more mentors. New schools are joining and we match mentors and mentees based on shared areas of interest like careers, subjects or hobbies so we’d like to hear from as many different potential mentors as possible.
If you’d like to learn more about becoming a Form the Future mentor, please email Sean Callow.
Our mentoring programme is not funded by any of our major programmes but relies on school contributions. So we were pleased to receive financial support via the Cambridgeshire Community Foundation from the Dulverton Trust Fund (£2000), Microsoft Research Limited Community Fund (£2000) and Marshall Community First Fund (£900). This will support 25 young people at risk of under-achieving to work with mentors from the Cambridge business community.
Plugging the STEM Skills Gap
Last month we held an event with Grant Thornton for employers eager to learn more about apprenticeships, including the new degree apprenticeships.
The feedback was great. If you'd like to learn more about bringing apprentices into your business, we can help point you in the right direction.
Events
If you want to help at one of our Enterprise Days we have two in October – on the 10th at Ely College and the 11th at Bassingbourn. This is a fun activity which requires no preparation. Your role as a coach is to guide students to be creative, remain focused, challenge their thinking and then celebrate their brilliant business ideas.
Our events diary for 2017/18 is starting to fill up already so please take a look at the events section on our website and let us know which you can support.
We'd like to hear from you
We probably don’t say thank you enough to all of you who mentor, help at our events, provide work experience and support us in other ways. We simply can’t do what we do without you and we want to recognize that.
We are always thrilled to get your feedback, both when you tell us how we can improve and when you tell us what you get out of working with us. Here’s a lovely report from a first time volunteer at one of Enterprise Days.
If you'd like to share your experience, we’d love to put it on our website. We also need to report to our funders so if, for example, you’ve taken on new apprentices or employed anyone as a result of work with us, we’d love to hear about it. We'd be extremely grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete this survey.
Work Experience
We supported over 1,000 students to do work experience this summer. If your business could provide students with work experience in 2017/18, please let us know. We are always eager to hear from companies who can take students with additional needs, often for one day a week throughout the term. It has a powerful impact on their ability to support themselves in the future.
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