We have been named Best Business Partner of The Year by Spark! at their annual award ceremony.
‘Spark!’ is an education-based charity that enhances young people’s employability, skills and knowledge through a range of programmes and services. We partner with them each year to deliver our Young Careers programme.
This award came after the success of a project led by our programme officer Sean Peyton, and the social and economic investment (SEI) team on Grahame Park.
The Young Careers project has been running for six years and provides work experience for students in the community. In addition to last year’s programme, which also featured a week of workshops on CV/ interview skills, speed networking and more, students were provided with six weeks of virtual one-to-one mentoring from colleagues who were willing to volunteer their time.
This has been of great value to the students as they have someone to provide them with guidance on how to navigate the next stages of their lives in relation to career choices.
At the award ceremony Spark! highlighted how we successfully transitioned the programme virtually during the pandemic to ensure young people from Barnet still had the opportunity to get an insight into our company and build on skills and knowledge that would benefit them in their career journeys. They particularly mentioned how all students who took part felt more confident and had a better understanding of what they wanted to do after college.
Sean said: “I am really pleased we have been awarded Business Partner of the Year at the Spark! Annual Awards and that our Young Careers project was recognised as essential for students during a trying year where access to such opportunities were limited.
“A lot of hard work went in to creating a programme that was comprehensive while also making the transition to an online version. I would like to thank all colleagues who volunteered their time as mentors for the students and to everyone else who supported me with running this programme.”
We are planning to run another work experience programme in 2022. Be sure to keep an eye out on our website and social media for information on how you can get involved.