Based on the popular TV series, The Apprentice, Community-Apprentice is an inter-school competition requiring young people to develop and demonstrate competencies such as leadership and enterprise.
“I believe that if we want to harness the potential of young people, then we need to get business more involved in education, particularly to develop skills like leadership, problem solving and resilience. Community-Apprentice offers a great way to achieve this and I urge you to get involved.”
Sir Albert Bore, Leader of Birmingham City Council
In this case, Sir Albert Bore is taking Lord Sugar’s role. Unlike Lord Sugar,
he won’t be looking for the team which can make the most profit. As leader
of the City Council, he’s more interested in the social profit young people
can generate by making a positive contribution to the local community.
What he does have in common with Lord Sugar is that he will need the
input of his ‘advisors’, his eyes and ears out on the ground who will, in this
case, include over 200 volunteers drawn from local companies. They will
be supporting young people to develop and reflect on their competencies.
The competition is underpinned by a ten-month extra-curricular
programme, delivered with the support of local businesses, schools and
charities supported by youth charity Envision. The structured process
supports teams of young people to identify a problem within their
community, create a solution, plan a project and see it through.
As well as enhancing their employability skills, Community-Apprentice
develops young people’s empathy and understanding of social issues. Its
legacy is therefore a pool of young people that are motivated and able to
build a better society for all of us.
Programme Overview
ONE city-wide competition THREE challenges
The Film Challenge Exploring the Problem
Sir Albert challenges the ‘community-apprentices’ to make a film to raise awareness of a social or environmental issue.
One of the most important things a coach can do is to inspire a person to dream. That’s why the
Envision experience starts by asking young people what ‘one thing’ they would like to see changed in
society.
Participants then look at the reality. Community-apprentices explore real problems, which may
involve carrying out surveys with local stakeholders, consulting with decision makers and speaking
with community groups. Collaboration skills are developed as the team work together to agree on a
single issue for their project.
Once an issue is chosen, students learn more about their subject through research and meeting
external experts who are often part of Envision’s network.
Equipped with this knowledge, teams work to meet a deadline to produce a short film which, through
a combination of passion and evidence, seeks to win hearts and minds about why their cause
matters.
The Boardroom Challenge
Making a difference
Sir Albert searches for a ‘can-do’ team of problem solvers able to make a positive contribution to the community. During this phase there is a lot of activity between
meetings and at weekends. The nature of the activities
depends upon the project, ranging from transforming a
physical space to delivering peer education workshops.
Through continued weekly sessions, we coach young
people to solve their own problems and hold each
other to account to keep their projects progressing.
In July, teams come together at a major event at
Aston Villa Football Club to present why they feel they
deserve to win Community-Apprentice. Young people
present the problem they identified, what they did
about it and the difference they made. Their business
mentors support their case by highlighting examples
of how they have developed key competencies
throughout the experience.
The Pitching Challenge
Creating Solutions
Sir Albert searches for teams able to develop and present a convincing case for social investment.
In weekly coaching sessions, students are supported to
structure their plans to clarify how their project will have a
positive social impact and how they will measure this.
Community-apprentices use a range of communication
methods e.g. letters, meetings and presentations, to
engage potential stakeholders, and secure support,
including resources that they need for their projects.
One team is selected from each school to go forward
to the presentation challenge in December. Volunteer
business mentors host additional mentoring sessions
at their offices, giving these students the opportunity
to prepare and practice their pitches in a professional
environment.
Community-Apprentice is all about getting young people to take the initiative. They decide what they want to change and how they want to do it. They assign roles and hold each other to account to get their team working effectively.Our role is to provide them with a structure to keep the process moving forward and to
provide trained staff and volunteers who can coach young people to clarify their goals,
plan how to achieve them and tackle problems along the way.
Activities are designed and facilitated to enable young people to develop a core syllabus
of competencies including creativity and enterprise, communication, determination and
resilience, planning and problem solving, leadership, collaboration and confidence.
Throughout the ten-month process we help young people reflect on their learning. At
the final stage, students are offered added support from business mentors who help
them to develop the vocabulary necessary to articulate their competencies, the lack of
which puts many young people at a disadvantage in the job market.
The mentors help young people to develop personal competency profiles which
evidence, through examples, the skills and qualities they have developed throughout the
project.
The competencies we develop are all relevant to employability, but we also want to
ensure that young people apply these attributes to social objectives as well. We achieve
this by developing another very special quality: empathy. Our activities raise young
people’s awareness of social problems and we make problems real by giving young
people direct contact with those affected or, in cases where these people are highly
vulnerable, those directly supporting them.
Once passionate about their cause, we use facilitation and coaching skills to support
young people to have the biggest social impact they can, helping them to clarify goals
and impacts and assess whether the activities they develop are likely to achieve these.
Through this approach we ensure a double benefit, delivering outcomes for both young
people and the wider community.
Our Approach
Environmental Vision (Envision) is registered in England and Wales. Company no: 4422128. Charity no: 1095328
FIND OUT MORE, Unit 413, Scott House, The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Birmingham, B9 4AA
0121 772 7685, [email protected]
Coaching Support
Business Mentors
Youth-Led
Competency Framework
Volunteer Mentoring
Guided Reflection
It’s a win-win combination: communities benefit from great projects, young people improve their employability skills and companies get employees who are better coaches and facilitators.
Our corporate partners share our vision of a society in which young people
grow up with a sense of social responsibility, a desire to get stuck in and
the skills to make a difference. Like us, they also recognise the need to
prepare young people for the world of work by building skills such as
resourcefulness, resilience and problem solving.
Our ‘community-apprentices’ develop these skills whilst working together
to solve a problem affecting their community. Our volunteers are there to
help them at key points during the process, where a bit of extra support
can make a big difference.
The great thing about our business volunteers is they are best placed to
convince young people that the competencies they develop through social
action are important to prospective employers. By becoming consciously
competent, young people are able to sell themselves more effectively.
We’ve developed a range of opportunities (set out overleaf) to appeal to
different interests, skills and responsibilities. As a result we’ve engaged
staff at all levels, from graduate trainees to senior directors. Through
experience, everyone develops a belief in their capacity to make a
difference, individually and by working with people very different from
themselves.
Employee Volunteering
“We’re supporting Community-Apprentice because it’s a great way for our employees to get involved with local schools, helping young people develop the sorts of skills we know they are going to need for work. I urge other businesses to get involved.”Eddie Fellows, Highway Network Manager for Amey
Choose from the following opportunities
‘Dragon’
Is there a Peter Jones or a Deborah Meaden wannabe in your company? We have an opportunity for some fun role play with a serious purpose.
Each of our partners is offered a place for a
volunteer to sit on a panel of investors at a Dragons’
Den-style event at which young people pitch for
funding for their social enterprises.
Each Envision team can pitch for up to £400 and
every team gets something. Dragons confer to
agree how much. Sometimes they decide to give
an up-front investment with a second tranche
conditional upon the team taking certain actions.
This can be used to offer motivation for a struggling
team or as a stretch for one that needs it.
Dragons offer feedback on the projects and
suggestions for things young people could think
about to make their ideas as impactful as possible.
Skills Mentor
Each of our Community Investor partner companies provide two or three team coaches for their adopted school.
Coaches generally work in pairs and run between
one and three sessions depending on how much
time they are able to give.
The first session is designed to help young
people order their thoughts, clarify their project
goals and identify and assess options for
achieving them.
The second is focused on supporting a team
of young people to rehearse and perfect their
pitches which they make to secure project
funding at an event in December.
A third helps young people to prepare to go ‘into
the boardroom’ in June to present why they
should win Community-Apprentice.
Because young people really value the opportunity
to see a working office environment, coaching
sessions (which each last between one and two
hours) are ideally provided in your workplace.
We organise all the logistics and getting the team to
you, ensuring your time is given where it can make
the biggest impact.
We understand that our corporate volunteers
are busy people, so we provide plans including
suggested activities and questions for all sessions to
limit the preparation that is required.
We also provide interactive training (which usually
takes three hours) in basic coaching techniques.
As well as helping volunteers be more effective
in supporting young people, many report in our
evaluations that they have found the coaching skills
and techniques developed to be genuinely useful
back in the workplace.
CV Mentor
Our CV mentors provide one-to-one support to help an individual young person to reflect on their experiences.
With the support of the business volunteer, the
young person will produce a personal competency
profile which evidences, through examples, the
skills and qualities they have developed throughout
the project.
Many young people lack a vocabulary to articulate
their competency to prospective employers,
putting them at a significant disadvantage in the
employment market.
This is where our business volunteers can make a
big difference. We need between 5 – 20 volunteers
who can get together on one day for two hours to
support young people. As usual we bring them to
your offices, taking care of all logistics. This ensures
that volunteer’s valuable time is put to best use,
supporting young people to improve their CVs.
One mentor is then asked to volunteer to take part in
the ‘board-room presentation’ advocating on behalf
of young people what skills they have developed
through their project.
“They have shown themselves to be excellent problem solvers and team workers, as well
as knowing when to use their own initiative to move the project forward”
Kasmir Sanghera, Head of 6th Form, Small Heath School
Interview
This engages large numbers of volunteers in a single afternoon and is great for team building.
Our speed interviewing event gives young people
an opportunity to practice articulating their
competencies verbally in fun and fast-moving mock
interview exercises.
It’s a high energy and inspiring event which gives
everyone a real buzz.
It will take place out of your office and participants
therefore need to be able to give a half day to
volunteer.
This is a great way for junior staff to develop their
interviewing skills and also helps develop appraisal
skills, particularly in terms of giving feedback
positively. Others just want to use existing skills for a
good purpose.
“Today has really shown the importance of giving young people a chance to work with people from business who have experience. Because there is so much talent here, what is needed is just a bit of nurturing and focus and when they get that it’s obvious great things can be achieved.”Anthony Anderson, Director of Anderson Financial
“I believe this is an essential experience for anyone who wants to progress in his or her organisation and become a successful leader or manager because it is a key tool in the trade for developing people to their full potential.” Jenny Zhao, Risk Analyst, EDF Energy
“For me, working with our business mentors was one of the best things. It’s important that you get to meet these kind of business people, because there’s not really anything else like it. We haven’t really had any opportunites like this at school and I think it’s been really good for us.” Faisal Ali 17, Small Heath School
Environmental Vision (Envision) is registered in England and Wales. Company no: 4422128. Charity no: 1095328
BIRMINGHAMUnit 413, Scott House
The Custard Factory
Gibb Street
Birmingham
B9 4AA
0121 772 7685
BRISTOLUnit G 5, The Office Bristol
St Nicholas House
31-34 High Street
Bristol
BS1 2AW
0117 315 5113
LONDON3rd Floor
63 Gee Street
London
EC1V 3RS
020 7253 1677
“Community-Apprentice was ideal for us as a company which commits time and resources into developing our staff. Staff from all levels of the company can get involved in an opportunity where we can not only develop ourselves but also support the next generation of talent in Birmingham” James Miller,Project Manager, Interserve