Jobs for Youth Zone Members

Young people from within our Youth Zone network are being helped into work, further education or training thanks to a new employability scheme, which has seen an 82% success rate in its first year.

Youth Zones in Manchester (The Factory), Wigan and Oldham (Mahdlo) have seen overwhelming success from a new six-week employability course, entitled ‘Get a Job’, which aims to help young people aged 16-19 to get the right skills to secure employment.

Whilst youth unemployment figures appear to be going down, there are still 737,000 unemployed young people across the country and we can’t underestimate he importance of getting young people into work, building both their confidence and life skills to achieve this.

The new scheme has been introduced to 209 Youth Zone members this year so far, the course has seen 82% of members move onto employment, education or training and 92% complete a level one PEARL qualification, half of which have also gone on to complete level two.

Mark, 21 completed the ‘Get a Job’ Course at Mahdlo (Oldham Youth Zone) and has now secured employment and is going on to train as a gas engineer, he said: “The course not only taught me how to create a good CV, which helped me get a job, it also gave me a lot of confidence in my own ability.”

“I think it is important for young people to have the opportunity to do a course like this, as it’s so hard to find a job and loads of young people struggle, even if they have just finished Uni.”

The project has been made possible thanks to funding from Accenture’s corporate citizenship initiative, Skills to Succeed, which awarded Wigan Youth Zone, Mahdlo (Oldham) and The Factory (Manchester) £98,694 between them to deliver the course.

Delivered over the last 12 months, the project has supported young people to enhance their skills, increase their prospects and get on the path towards employment. The accredited course supports Youth Zone members to take part in mock interviews, enterprise projects, teamwork skills and develop their CV writing techniques.

Mindi Lenoard, Employability Coordinator at The Factory Youth Zone, commented on her experience of delivering the course: “I’m really proud of the young people who’ve been through my course, we’ve had some fantastic results and I think many will have learnt some brilliant lessons for their future careers, the main one being that if you work hard you can achieve. One young person from this course has already gone on to pursue her dream job as a Children’s Representative abroad.”

Watch our recent video interview with Joe, Mahdlo member who was recently recruited to Primeseal, Oldham based flatroof specialist through the ‘Get a Job’ course and his employer about their experiences: