BPT and Steel Warriors run their first SteelWorks employability course

During February half term, we hosted a group of young people from the local community to deliver our first “SteelWorks” course, a project led by our brilliant partner Steel Warriors. This was the first in a series of employability courses we are running throughout this year, as part of a programme funded through the Evening Standard. Throughout these courses, we are looking to engage with young people aged 16 – 24, aiming to give them advice, connections and exposure to enter the job market. We aim to achieve this by delivering weeklong courses, featuring a mix of both physical activity sessions and also classroom-based workshops.

For this first courses, on the Monday we welcomed a cohort of 15 young people to the BPT site, where they were given a tour and overview of the week ahead. Steel Warriors then provided an introduction to calisthenics, followed by a session talking about poteintial career paths. The next day included a more advanced calisthenics session, before a workshop in the afternoon, where Marvin from BPT spoke about how to marketing yourself and grow your brand. Wednesday saw the most demanding day, where on-site partner the Foundry kindly hosted us for a session in their state of the art gym, whilst also advising the group on how to get into the fitness industry. Afterwards, the young people ventured over to the Gymshark Regent Street store, where they experienced a tour and then took part in a fitness session using their amazing facilities. Thursday featured more insight into industry routes and a final calisthenics session, before the group then finalised their business proposals for the next day.

For the final day, we were joined by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), where they delivered an excellent workshop, providing an insight on how to get into the corporate and financial world, along with advice and guidelines on how young people can pursue this industry. Following this, each of the participants delivered a short presentation to the panel from RBC, where they had to pitch a business proposal or initiative, seeking feedback from the RBC staff. Every single presentation was of extremely high quality, especially considering the limited time they’d had to prepare, and the panel were blown away by the calibre of each pitch. The course then finished with each participant being presented with clothing, vouchers and a certificate.

We were delighted with how this first course went and were hugely impressed with all the young people who took part. Going forward, all contributing partners will stay in contact with the participants, seeking to provide them with opportunities wherever possible. Following this first course already, some of the cohort have benefited from a range of networking, mentoring and work experience opportunities. Many of them are also developing their business initiatives to see if they can be taken further.

A big thank you to both Gymshark and the Foundry for hosting us at your top class facilities and for connecting with all our participants. Huge appreciation also goes RBC, who were so engaging with all our young people, leaving them incredibly inspired after interacting with you. Thanks as well to our partner Share Community, who provided a series of amazing lunches throughout the week. Most of all, we are hugely grateful to Steel Warriors for running this programme and for being so brilliant to collaborate with! Whilst continuing to work with the young people from our hugely successful first group, we are now looking forward to our next course, which will take place in the first week of August.