Stage One: Outreach Give opportunities, new skills and career aspirations to young people in disadvantaged areas. As well as working with schools, True Potential has helped create a school that could set disadvantaged people on the path to success. Through its sister organisation, set up by company founder David Harrison, it supported the launch of the Beacon of Light in Sunderland. The initial £150,000 contribution from the Harrison Centre for Social Mobility (HCSM) to the sports and education facility was more than a mere financial donation, however.
During the coronavirus crisis, True Potential and its partners at the Foundation of Light stepped up their efforts to ensure people in disadvantaged communities were not further left behind. The Foundation redeveloped the programmes delivered at the Harrison Centre – Back in the Game and Back on Track – to move to an inclusive e-learning programme of delivery. All 34 Back on Track participants continued to be engaged by course tutors through Microsoft Teams, and for learners who did not have access to technology or the internet, tutors posted workbooks and course resources to learners at home and drove to participants houses to pick up learner work to continue the assessment process. Harrison Centre learners completed qualifications across the four months of lockdown which included: Maths and English, Personal and Social Development, ICT, Sport, Health and Social Care and Customer Services, all of which had a module of managing finances embedded into the work programme. Learners have now returned to staggered classroom delivery with 98% of learners returning to face to face delivery.
It was the catalyst for a new education programme run by HCSM at the centre that aims to complement core skills in maths and English to inspire a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs – and provide support and education for those that need it most. The Beacon is located in Sunderland Central parliamentary constituency. Sunderland Central is ranked 24th out of the 29 North East constituencies for social mobility, according to a report by the House of Commons Library. In terms of youth social mobility, it is ranked 357th out of 533 English constituencies, placing it in the bottom third nationally. The Harrison Centre at the Beacon hosts workshops which give teenagers and young people the skills, confidence and experience necessary to get on in the world of work. There are four programmes in total aimed at ages 14 to 19+ and attracting young people from across the surrounding region, many of which are from disadvantaged backgrounds. The young people True Potential engages with receive a head start in pursuing their career ambitions, but True Potential is rewarded too; by unearthing talent that could drive its business forward in future. 14 Opportunity Action Plan
On the Back in the Game programme, tutors developed 15 new programmes specifically designed to meet the needs of lockdown, engaging the adult learners and their children together in course activities to ensure positive family relationships over the course of lockdown. Within three weeks, tutors had developed new schemes of work to provide accredited programmes focusing on health and wellbeing, physical activity, work skills and employability as well as managing finances and home cooking skills. Within a month of launching the programmes, the Foundation had enrolled 76 learners on programmes, offering daily contact with participants via Microsoft Teams to support participants through their programmes. To ensure the hardest to reach learners can benefit from the Harrison Centre’s employability programmes, the team is taking forward examples of what has worked well in lockdown to include a mixed delivery approach from September, with online learning and face to face classroom delivery. Delivery over lockdown has been a real success and has generated new ways to support young people to make the most of their talents and potential.
