Team London, the Mayor’s volunteering programme, is delighted to have won a Business Charity Awards 2016. The team’s HeadStart London programme claimed the ‘Charity Partnership (Public Sector) Award’ which recognises an outstanding partnership between an organisation in the public sector and a UK charity.
In 2014, Team London joined forces with the youth empowerment charity The Challenge to develop HeadStart London, a new model for youth social action and employability. The programme helps diverse groups of 16-18 year-olds develop employability skills through volunteering and professional workshops, and then rewards their social action with interviews for paid work with partner businesses.
The programme challenges young people to complete 16 or more hours of volunteering. In return they take part in workshops and gain the chance of a guaranteed interview with leading employers including Starbucks, Lloyds Banking Group, New Look, Zendesk, Berkeley Group, Bloomberg and Heathrow Community Fund.
In its first 18 months, more than 3,000 young people volunteered, giving more than 50,000 hours to support 234 charities. Over seventy percent of the young people who completed the programme were assessed as work-ready by businesses, compared with 20 percent of standard applicants. A total of 253 young people have found employment with programme partners.
After its success in London, HeadStart is launching in Birmingham and Manchester, and could be in six UK cities by 2017.
Business Charity Awards 2016
Third Sector’s Business Charity Awards recognise the great charity work of corporate Britain. The Awards are open to any UK company who is involved in schemes to benefit charities or the voluntary sector.