Inspire an Apprentice to Invigorate YOUR Business

March 2024

Do you know what opportunities are in

Northern Devon?

Our team recently talked to some young people that are taking part in a local research project. The main topic was on careers and opportunities these young people had throughout their education. We discovered that all these young people had little to no careers advice growing up, nothing was discussed about local industry sectors and up-and-coming industries in the area. Many were told that they had to go to university to study for their profession of preference. This lack of careers advice is detrimental to the young people growing up in North Devon as they believe they have better prospects if they go to university and there are fewer opportunities with good prospects of long-term, full-time work. This is however not true, there are loads of pathways and opportunities that young people can take. Our job is to try and connect businesses to those young people to give them a better understanding of the various careers in North Devon. Giving businesses a channel that they may not have considered to bring bright ambitious people straight out of education into work.

2/3 of Degrees not used in the UK.

64% of graduates say their degree has no relevance to their job role. 67% said they believe they could have got their current role without their degree. This is approximately £65 billion spent on unused degrees. Although, it does have benefits, students could gain similar skills learning on the job. This is clearly a result of a broken system where we give young people little hope other than university. This is unsustainable for the economy as university fees are likely to increase and the cost of living whilst grant prices stay stagnant. This is reducing equal opportunity for low income, deprived area, single parent, or non-graduate parent households.

Change of Mindsets

Successful local people need to help inspire young people, and to show their unconventional route to their successes. This would give hope and allow them to understand that moving away and spending thousands of £’s on higher education may not be necessary. This would also help support local career guidance counsellors and hopefully inspire them to change their advice and signpost young people to apprenticeships/internships instead.

Free Workshops Helping to Build  a Sustainability

Strategy for Your Business

Cotie @ Petroc, Tiverton are hosting a series of three workshops helping you to build a sustainability strategy for your business It is being hosted by 361 Energy and People&Plant with the first of the series being on Monday 15th April. We will be touching on how to adapt your organisations mindset and position sustainability at the core of your operations, barriers and how to mobilise action within your company, and relevant case studies to show success and not-so-success stories. Please contact martin@361energy.org or lily@361energy.org to arrange your place for this.

Call to Action

• Check out the blog section of the SBR website where there is useful content from previous newsletters.

• Come and talk to us at Petroc, Tiverton for some FREE sustainability advice and see if your eligible to work on a project with us.

• Join us for our monthly webinar. Just click on the button below for FREE tickets.

Save the Date

People&Planet and 361 Energy Workshop: 15th April

Big Green Week: 8-16th June

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