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About us
Work and Learn is a charity which has the following objectives:
To advance the learning skills and education of young in engineering and science disciplines
The charity will put together an offering of free educational and training events, and counselling and mentoring opportunities for young individuals to achieve this objective. It will set-up a pool of collaborators from academia and industry to provide educational and training opportunities inscience and engineering. In particular, educational objectives will be met through the organisation of free specialised e-learning courses for the public benefit with a view to teaching attendees hands-on and applied topics which improve their technical knowledge. These courses will be delivered by leading speakers from academia and industry through the charity's e-learning portal as a series of webinars.
Another important part of learning comes from active participation to carry out a task or solve a problem, as opposed to passive reading. Such learning opportunities are rare unless one is working within industry. The charity will design a number of short to medium term training courses with its industry partners. These will focus on learning and skill improvement for the individual concerned and projects will be tailored to suit them. The charity aims to provide opportunities which include physical relocation to work with industry, as well as those which can be worked on from home.
Counselling and mentoring is an important part of charity's activities. It will seek volunteers from academia and industry who are willing to help provide such guidance in addition to charity staff. The whole process will use the internet in addition to physical contact to minimise cost and effort for those involved.
To prepare individuals for later work experiences in their life through provision industrial training, and placement opportunities
It is extremely important for the young generation to realise their work potential so that they can positively contribute to society. The high rate of unemployment and low technical skills among young people is a major concern within the East Midlands region both for potential employees and employers. The charity will collaborate with businesses within East Midlands region to provide industrial training opportunities with focus on continued career development to young people who would otherwise not have such an opportunity. A number of companies in science and engineering disciplines will be approached to join such work of the charity, as well as requested to collaborate on designing appropriate training schemes for the future.
Training placements will provide young people with a number of direct benefits. Firstly, it will provide them with technical knowledge and skill set required for challenges they face in their later life. Work projects will require technical skills that they must learn to effectively complete the projects. Secondly, it will teach a number of skills which are only possible though work, e.g. project management, time-keeping, effective communication, planning, group work, and so on. Finally, such opportunities will give them self-confidence, knowledge and a better prospect for future work.
All training services will be administratively managed through the charity website to minimise cost and provide an efficient platform for organising training placements. It is also expected that the companies working together with charity to fulfill this cause will sponsor charity's work and help raise the funds that the charity needs to continue to deliver on its objectives.
For the public benefit, provide free learning and training opportunities for people who are no longer in full-time employment or find it difficult to get employment, for continued development of their capabilities, competencies and skills.
The charity will disseminate details of its activities through a number of channels and try to engage with individuals who are either struggling to find work but have previous work experience, or have not managed to get work after education. For the first scenario, the charity can provide direct benefit to the individual(s) through training and education programmes that could retrain them to improve their employment prospects in a different field. Such retraining will provide continued improvements to the individual's knowledge-base and skills. For the latter scenario, work experience with leading companies will signficantly enhance the skill set of a young person who has never worked before in addition to improving their chances of securing future employment.
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