“YouNG International Enterprise” project, coordinated by NGi (UK) Limited and partnered by PEDAL Consulting successfully kicks-off.

The Consortium wishes to significantly improve the employment and life chances of its young people. In this respect the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has identified ‘soft skills’ that employers seek. They identify that the fundamental requirement is for a ‘POSITIVE ATTITUDE’ which is defined as a readiness to take part, openness to new ideas and activities and a desire to achieve. This is a theme that is identified as being of critical importance by D2N2, the Local Enterprise Partnership for Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire who in their ‘Growth Strategy’ and ‘Skills for Growth Strategy’ identify ‘Employability Skills’ and ‘Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Skills’ as being required in order for the area to realise their economic growth targets.

The project will take 78 young people (male and female) from inner city and rural Nottinghamshire and instil within them the belief that they can take ownership of their own destinies through developing the skills that employers desire in today’s labour market.

Specifically:

• A positive attitude – readiness to take part, openness to new ideas and activities, desire to achieve
• Self-reliance – self-management, readiness to accept responsibility, flexibility, resilience, time management
• People skills – teamwork, communication skills, listening and questioning, respecting others, contributing to discussions
• General employment skills – problem solving, literacy, application of numeracy
• Specialist skills – business and customer awareness, application of information technology

The programme will be based around the successful YouNG Markets programme that features a range of activities that are designed to appeal to the range of learning styles of young people and to be highly vocational and work related in nature to achieve the outcomes of the programme and to develop the ‘soft skills’ within the participants that employers today say are missing in young people.

YouNG Markets engage young people in learning by doing something real, and provides a great enterprise learning opportunity as well as experiential soft skill development. The project will see young people devise and develop their own business/product and sell this in the environment of an international market. More information here.