It was another busy week for the Career Footsteps initiative last week with two promotional events taking place to help raise awareness of the programme and help other schools to make the most of the free sessions on offer.
Run in partnership with the Edge Foundation, the aim of this campaign is to introduce students to a range of careers and sectors, and to highlight alternative pathways into those careers. It is available to primary schools, secondary schools and colleges across the UK.
The first event was hosted by Activate Learning at their Reading Campus. Running a large careers fair with over 40 employers, our Career Footsteps volunteers ran workshops about their career history, highlighting the vocational pathways they took into the world of work. Three Career Footsteps volunteers took part; Louise Brown (a project manager), Lucie Brown (a Senior IT Manager) and Samantha McCarthy (a Partner Development Operations Manager).
Natalie Ellis, Group Manager for Activate Careers, said: “We are committed to supporting our students to make informed choices about their future careers. Events such as the Careers Fair are an important part of connecting students with potential future employers as they explore the huge variety of options available to them. Feedback from employers show that these events are also a useful way of promoting apprenticeships and other vacancies and reaching the talent they need for their business”.
The second event took place at Stony Dean School in Buckinghamshire with two volunteers; Emma Andrews (a HR Manager) and Gabrielle West (an Employee Relations Policy Officer). 40 of their sixth form students took part and together with the volunteers they explored a variety of vocational routes into work. Volunteers delivered a short introductory talk to the students about their career path and spoke to the students in groups, explaining a little more about the route they took into the world of work and answering questions from the students.
Thanks to all volunteers who took part in the week’s events and to both schools for helping us to host these wonderful promotional events to let others know about Career Footsteps.