Using digital skills to enhance employability
prospects of the hardest to reach young people.
This is a pioneering initiative developed to increase the digital skills amongst some of the UK’s most digitally disadvantaged young people. Together, we are utilising digital skills to enhance the employability prospects of the hardest to reach young people.
In 2017, we launched our Digital Reach skills initiative to engage the UK’s most digitally disadvantaged young people. The pilot is enabling us to digitalise elements of our employability programmes in Scotland, ultimately helping us to remove the digital barriers faced by the hardest to reach young people.
The young people we support face a range of complex issues that will make the sustainability of their employment even more challenging.
With 564,000 young people aged 16-24 being unemployed in February-April 20171 , the issue of unemployment amongst young people across Britain is still extensive.
Our partnership with Action For Children as part of our flagship #digitalreach programme represents a unique approach to tackling multiple challenges within one initiative. For young people, not only does it continue to support AFC’s successful employability programmes, but explores how digital skills will further enhance young people’s potential. Furthermore, exploring how these vital programmes can be delivered using the latest digital platforms means we’re also able to use technology to transform how we support the needs of more young people into the future.
Together, our programme will target those young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) and who are the furthest away from the labour market, due to a range of complex challenges they are struggling to deal with. These issues can include homelessness, substance misuse, criminal behaviour, financial issues, teenage pregnancy and numeracy and literacy issues. In addition to this, these young people are among the most digitally disenfranchised and often suffer of numeracy and literacy issues, making their studies and employability prospects an even greater challenge.
Youthbuild is one of our flagship employability programmes which will be supported by our pilot with Nominet Trust. It offers training and employment opportunities for disadvantaged young people aged between 16 and 20 years. Highlighted as one of the “best ways to help disadvantaged young people” by the Scottish Government, our award-winning nine-month programme is run in collaboration with more than 100 construction companies in deprived areas of Glasgow.
We are really delighted to be involved in Nominet Trust's Digital Reach programme. The funding is allowing us to develop a digital solution which will help the young people we work with to complete their employability training. It will also ultimately allow us to reach more young people and help them achieve their goals.