Ufi-Supported Organisation Celebrates Helping One Million People
By Mahreen Ferdous, Project Account Manager for Ufi VocTech Trust
During this time of great uncertainty, it was refreshing to see an article about the Princes Trust earlier this week which announced that they have now helped one million young people in developing their skills, careers and start their own businesses.
In a celebrational video, well-known names from the arts & entertainment industry shared their stories of how The Prince’s Trust helped kick-start their careers including Idris Elba, David Oyelowo, and Naughty Boy.
Ufi believe that everyone should have access to learning & developing skills throughout their working lives and champion the use of digital technologies to support this – which is why Ufi offered Princes Trust a grant to develop their services using technology in innovative ways.
Prince’s Trust were awarded a VocTech Impact grant for a project which is aiming to enhance the provision of their services using digital tools. This will allow them to reach and engage more young people than ever before. It will support young people as they are on-boarded to join Prince’s Trust programmes, give them remote support during programme, and help them to take next steps on completion.
Initial pilots have been run with centres in Northern Ireland with some enlightening findings, which may prove useful to others using digital to enhance service provision:
- In digital settings, small cohorts with short sharp sessions helped to make young people comfortable and stay engaged.
- Having options of self-service that allow autonomous decisions gave young people ownership of their learning journey.
- The importance of keeping the human element and make sure that the tech is augmenting the delivery and not distracting from the overall purpose.
- Digital support and any training in a new way of working needs to be included.