We’ve been shortlisted for the 2022 SEYH ‘Social Impact’ Award!
We are one of 3 organisations that have been shortlisted for this award for all our hard work over the last year! We have been considered for this due to our work during lockdown delivering support packages of food, and other supplies to our students to keep them engaged and progressing throughout such a difficult time. We have also been considered due to our personalised curriculum, our engagement with the families of our young people, our voluntary work, and the relationships we form with our students, even highlighting the students that have returned to us as Staff.
We strongly believe in our vision: ‘An empowered generation of employable young people, making a positive contribution to society.’ This starts for us in our own school. We believe in having a tailored curriculum. One that doesn’t view learning as ‘one size fits all’ and is underpinned by a desire to enable all students to develop their personal, social, academic and employability skills to a level which enables them to lead meaningful, happy lives. This is designed to have a tangible community benefit as well.
Our commitment to our student’s learning is something we pride ourselves on and nothing displays this more than the work we committed to during lockdown. Love is at the heart of everything we do, and our amazing staff proved this by going above and beyond to ensure our students were
engaged, learning and making positive choices during lockdown. We delivered equipment for them to take part in remote lessons, delivered care packages to those who needed them. Our staff changed their hours of work, some working as late as 8pm, to make much needed home visits and check on our young people. Check out the photo above to see our wonderful Elaine, sat on the kerb having a cuppa! We also received acknowledgment cards from Jo-Anne Saunders of Kirklees Council and the lord-lieutenant of West Yorkshire recognising the hard work we put in during such a turbulent period.
Our work is not limited to just students on our roll though, we are a social enterprise, and it is important to us that our work benefits the local communities. We sponsor local sports teams, such as the Mossley Hill Junior Football Team. Sport and physical activity are so important for our young people as it offers them the opportunity to channel their energy into positive outlets. It has great benefit to the social, emotional and mental health of our young people as it offers you a safe space to make friends, be part of a community and keep yourself fit and healthy!
We have also started projects to encourage a sense of community in our local area. One example of this is our recent community kitchen project. Our South Liverpool Youth Hub was working with several young Afghan refugees this summer. Due to the ongoing situation in their home country, they have had to come to the UK for their safety. Currently they are living in a local hotel and don’t have anywhere to be able to cook, so we came up with the idea to form a community kitchen project! This involved once a week, inviting the Afghan young people to come to visit us in our Garston centre and work with some of our young people, teaching each other our own local dishes.
This encouraged the two communities to work together, learn from each other and form friendships. We believe in buying local, to help support other local businesses, so most of the equipment and ingredients we didn’t already have were bought from shops local to us. This is just one of our successful community projects.
These are just a few examples of our work over the last 2 years, and we are looking forward to continuing this work in the future!
Thanks to the support of Avela Home Service who generously donated £5000 towards our Mobilise project. We now have a mini bus which helps to transport our students to and from our Liverpool facilities. This is making a dramatic difference to the lives of our young people. 
Claire Cook, 37, lives in Liverpool with her two children, Lucia, 11, and Samuel, five. She is chief executive of Employability Solutions, alternative education centres in Liverpool and Huddersfield, which she founded with her business partner, Nadia, in 2012 to help 14-19-year-olds improve their career prospects. 
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