Celebrating ThinkForward’s volunteers

It’s volunteering week and we’d like to give a shout out to the amazing volunteers who offer wonderful opportunities to our young people. We have some brilliant businesses who enable their staff to volunteer as mentors, and others who host activities such as workplace insight days, CV workshops and interview skills sessions.

These invaluable experiences help to open up new windows on the world. Sophie, a student in Kent had a volunteer from Deloitte. She said: ‘Mentoring has been an amazing opportunity. I’ve learned so much from my mentor and really enjoyed getting an insight into what it’s like to be in the workplace.’

London student Sabrina explained: ‘I’ve become more confident because I’ve had lots of opportunities to do new activities like career talks and business insight days. I get to meet and speak to a lot of new people. It’s helped me to see the point of learning because now I get the connection between working hard at school, getting a job and moving on to the next stage of my life.’

While volunteering has an obvious benefit for the young people it is also hugely rewarding for staff. Alison Payne at COOK said: ‘‘When we hold insight days or mentoring sessions there is a lovely benefit for our team as it gives them a chance to grow and develop their skills in public speaking, coaching, mentoring and relationship building. The young people build their confidence and learn skills to help them become work ready and be clearer about their ambitions for the future.’

Ardian run mentoring sessions and have recently responded to a request for volunteers to review CVs to ensure each young person does justice to their skills & talents. Matt Thornton who manages the relationship said: ‘I feel very fortunate to work for an organisation which encourages and actively recruits people who are focussed on more than just financial success. I have the real sense when I talk to my colleagues that they have the awareness and decency to realise that the impact of this pandemic reaches far beyond their own family and work lives, and that they appreciate only too well that many young people will be needing even more support than ever.’

Billy in Kent described how having a volunteer mentor helped him build new skills: ‘I think the difference between what I learn at school and what I learned at business mentoring is the realistic side of things. We did a session about interviewing for jobs which definitely helped me when I went for a part-time job interview. They explained that I shouldn’t slouch, to speak properly, and all the stuff that I needed to know to get the job. I did the interview and I got the job! It’s given me more confidence.’

Class of 2019 six month update

Our Head of Impact Lee Robinson has an analysis of the six-month outcomes for our latest ThinkForward graduates, and it’s good news.

We have recently reviewed the first results of our check in with graduates of the ThinkForward class of 2019 six months after they completed our programme, and I’ve now got the pleasure of sharing our initial findings.

We are thrilled to see that 86% of young people in London and Nottingham (known outcomes, 86% response rate) are now in education or employment. This is an improvement on the EET rate (Education, Employment and Training) figure of 83% we recorded three months after our young people graduated. 86% of all programme graduates have experienced some form of education, employment or training during the six months immediately following graduation.

This is an impressive outcome, particularly when we consider that programme participants had been selected in Year 8 as being at high risk of not being EET in the future. In fact, 74% of all programme graduates grew up in the 20% most deprived communities in England as measured by the IDACI (Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index).

Our results indicate that ThinkForward’s programme has been successful in closing the gap for this group of young people and helped to ensure that their outcomes are more reflective of the national averages for all young people. We also hope to do further research and evaluation work to benchmark the programme’s success in the coming months .

It’s also noteworthy that our young people are moving into ‘high-quality’ EET opportunities, with over 70% of young people who are moving into education progressing on to level 3 and 4 opportunities and 96% of young people progressing into work which is permanent employment. We also know that 95% of those employed were working more than 16 hours a week and 85% were paid at or above the Real Living Wage. The most common sectors for them to move into were hospitality, food and event management; retail & sales; and construction, property and trades.

It is important to remember that this data was collected just before the coronavirus pandemic began to have a significant impact on the labour market and so we will be holding further follow-up calls in the coming months to establish how the current situation is impacting these young people’s progression.

If want to find out more about our results, check out our updated impact pages for access to the headline results and an interactive dashboard where you can explore what the class of 2019 has achieved since completing the ThinkForward programme.

ThinkForward’s COVID-19 Response

Schools and colleges in England have reopened, which means our coaches are also back in schools.

Our coaches have been working with their young people remotely and we have continued to deliver digital ready for work events, but coaches are now able to safely see students again in person.

ThinkForward delivers a highly personalised service to every young person so we really value being able to meet them face-to-face. A huge thanks to all the schools and colleges who have been doing to much work to prepare for a safe return and for welcoming our coaches back.

Ashley McCaul
CEO