We have been working with Brother UK for two years, delivering a mentoring programme for Year 10 and 11 students. It’s wonderful to see the development of the students as they have progressed through the programme, this is down to the hard work of the mentors, the structured programme that is personalised to meet the needs of the students and the positive relationships they have developed. This year, the mentors have supported the students with college applications, CV writing and mock interviews to help them prepare for their exams. Whilst the students have developed many skills through the programme, the main impact has been the confidence to aspire to be successful in their chosen career.
The strong focus we have on activities local to our office means that our colleagues who live outside the area can’t participate in the same way.
This year, we made our Community Engagement Programme more flexible, enabling our none office based colleagues the opportunity to get involved. One example of this is Liam Fitzgerald who joined the BEE Mentoring Programme. This London-based charity is set up to provide mentors for young people during their GCSE year with the aim of improving exam results and giving them support and skills during a very tough period.
Liam’s mentee was selected from students at his old school and Liam was able to work with him, helping prioritise school work and providing a sounding board to discuss options post-GCSEs.
Liam found the experience very rewarding and recommends mentoring programmes as a means of self-development. He found the work challenging but learned lots about himself and his own capabilities.
We continue to support several industry days, The Tameside Hack and National Careers Week, all with a continued emphasis on STEM subjects.
Tameside Hack invites young people across our community to participate in a real world technical project. Students were tasked with creating solutions to keep the public safe. The winning team created an ingenious app that alerts users to the presence of different types of allergens in products by scanning a QR code.
Digital Her was a new event for 2019, with the aim of empowering girls to engage with STEM-related subjects at GCSE and A-Level and inspiring a future career in digital and technology. We helped sponsor the Digital Her Inspire and Empower Roadshow and some of our colleagues attended as role models, touring schools to spread this positive message.
We hosted an Industry Networking Event at Audenshaw School to inform year seven and eight students about the world of work. A wide range of local business professionals shared their stories of how they got started and became successful in their various careers to inspire the students to think about their futures.
We host work experience placements for students, giving them a taste of the real world of work.
It was great to have support from Brother UK with our Prince’s Trust Team Programme. Gemmer was really helpful in organising the two days and the team who ran the sessions were really welcoming and engaging. They had put a lot of thought into the activities to make them interesting and suitable for the participants. Visiting a real workplace is a really important opportunity for our young people.
