Our Young Leaders https://www.ethosvo.org/project/young-leaders-kickstart/ project is the best thing we have ever done in the field of work development. We took 30 unemployed young people and asked them to enhance our futuristic work platform. It now is future-ready – designed to employ at least 200 more to help organisations with work of social value.
Our initial plans were funded by the DWP, and we have reached out to many employers since to talk about our successes. There around 40 of them are excited to work with us after seeing and hearing the results of our pilot scheme. We created collaborations with Ethos Partners to support their social value projects, and supported the young people to launch their own ventures.
(See the quotes from our partner entrepreneurs above)
This support has now been limited and despite some wrangling with central government, our initial plans have been scuppered. It felt unjust, and for a while we were crushed, but we hate negativity – it’s so draining!
Instead, we asked our Young Leaders to do something a lot more positive.
We asked our 30 Young Leaders:
“Do you believe in this project enough to want to raise money to give young people like you the same work opportunity?”
After working 25 hours per week on minimum wage for six months, they could have said, “Why? What’s in it for me?”
Instead, a crowd of talented, community-minded individuals said, “Definitely”.
This is the result. A crowdfunder they call, “Save the Future of Work” designed in just two weeks by a team of young people all under 25, some of whom will be leaving us very shortly* to new job options.
We are so, so proud of them…
Be inspired by their amazing success and donate online now! www.crowdfunder.co.uk/young-leaders
Annabelle Lambert, Co Founder Ethos VO and Young Leaders product owner (leading on design and operations)
*We hope to keep at least a few of them on as they have proved themselves so important to our future vision, and are striving to build their own business cases through this crowdfunder.