Careers Inspiration For Every Child

In April we supported 150 students from three Primary Schools to take part in DNA Day. DNA Day celebrates STEM and sees school children all over the world take part in exciting learning activities. The students we worked with were from schools within some of the most deprived areas in our region who are less likely to experience opportunities like this.

The students had the chance to meet real scientists who taught them how to extract DNA from strawberries and provided them with genuine insight into what happens during their working day. Site visits that provide skills and insight into the working world are invaluable for young people’s intellectual development and ability to broaden their horizons. We were therefore lucky to be hosted by Illumina, an international leader in the field of genomics.

It’s thanks to the support we receive from GlobalGiving that we can connect with companies like Illumina and create impactful hands-on learning experiences. Whilst our partners can share their expertise, we bring the careers learning that enables young people to understand how to get there as well as the advice to companies on how to make their message accessible to a young audience.

Creating and delivering experiences like this is not easy. A lot of resources and skilled individuals are required to make a single day happen, and, as an organisation promoting social mobility in the most unequal city in Europe, we can’t do enough of them. Working in careers education we know better than anyone that, “nothing worth having in life comes easy”, so we’re determined to keep creating these opportunities with your support.

As for the impact a whole day in a STEM workplace has on a young person, one of the students summed it up for us:

"Imagine getting to work in a place like this every day. I'm going to be a scientist!”

Links:

• Our Impact Report for 2022/23

In recent months, we have been rolling out new products that allow us to deepen the quality of our work and widen the audiences we engage with. The two products that we’ll mention in this update are our annual Student Attitude Survey and our teacher continuing professional development (CPD) offer.

At Form the Future we want to be pioneers, moving away from the top-down model of telling students what job is best for them and instead creating avenues for students to explore their interests and gain the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves. We bring this approach to everything we do, and the Student Attitude Survey allowed us to gain a more detailed insight into what the young people we work with think, feel, and need when it comes to their careers education.

The survey covered a range of topics, from where students get ideas and inspiration about careers, to how confident they are about school equipping them with the skills they need in the future, to uncovering the reasons why students feel some jobs are out of reach.

Running a large-scale survey was a big step for an organisation of our size, and we couldn’t be certain what results it would yield when we set out. However, thanks to a large response rate and some well-crafted questions, we have gained insights that allow us to improve and grow our work, enabling us to embark on a new phase as we mature as an organisation. Taking innovative steps like this comes with a higher level of risk for small, not-for-profit organisations, but with the support we gain through GlobalGiving, we can have the confidence to take the step and reap the rewards.

The other product we would like to share is almost at the other end of the spectrum. Rather than asking our traditional beneficiaries (students) what they thought, our teacher CPD offer is our opportunity to share our knowledge with a secondary beneficiary.

As a team, Form the Future holds huge collective knowledge and experience that we can use to improve the quality of careers education beyond our activities alone. Our CPD offer allows us to support teachers – the people who spend more time with students than anyone outside of their family – in providing higher quality careers learning and mainstreaming it through their regular work.

Our CPD offer is interactive, fun, and brings in employers from our region: so it’s no surprise that it’s proving popular with teachers who have previously seen us in action at their school and now get their own turn to benefit! We’ve worked hard to get this product established and are now hoping to deliver it to a growing number of schools each year.

This update has been about innovation, growth, and constant improvement. Three things that are necessary for an organisation to succeed: with your help, we hope to keep doing them for years to come.

Links:

• Our Impact Report for 2022/23