Met Police and Hebe Foundation bring young people from around London together in the Dragons Den to improve diversity in the Met!
On Thursday 4th August Black Prince Trust partnered with The Met Police and Hebe Foundation ran a Dragons Den/Apprentice style initiative, where young people from all over London were grouped together to work on a task set by the Met. The objective was to develop ideas to create a more inclusive process for Met Police recruitment, in order to create a more diverse police force on the whole. Each group had to present their proposals to a panel of police officers and local Young Advisors.
Around 150 young people aged 13 – 17 arrived at the BPT site in the morning, for a full day of pitching their proposals, with plenty of activities in between.
Participants were split up into groups of 7/8 and were based in the Regal Court, where they finalised and practiced their proposals. At regular intervals, each group pitched their ideas to select panels, who assessed and scrutinised their ideas.
In between their pitches, all the groups took part in activities on the BPT site, including basketball, boxing, dodgeball, and they even had to chance to interact with visiting police dogs and horses.
The winning groups will now have the opportunity to take their proposals a step further, where they will have to chance to present to a panel featuring some top figures in the Met, at their headquarters at Scotland Yard.
Nigel Pearce, Community Engagement Officer with the Metropolitan Police Central South Team said “We’re very grateful to The Black Prince Trust for hosting us today alongside the Hebe Foundation. We brought together young people from right across London to help the Met come up with strategies to diversify the workforce and employ more underrepresented groups. An absolutely incredible day full of fun, energy and lots of ideas.”
Amie Buharie, CEO of The Hebe Foundation said “We were fortunate today to bring our young people over with Black Prince Trust providing the space and some activities. We had boxing and basketball and it’s just great for the young people to have so much space to be able to use up all of that energy and just put it into something positive. We had the Met Police here too and the young people were doing their Dragon’s Den presentations, so it was a wonderful combination of three partners coming together to serve the community in and around Lambeth. A great collab!”
Alex Burke, Community Officer at BPT said “It was amazing to welcome the Met, Hebe Foundation and so many enthusiastic young people on site. Having watched a few of the groups deliver their proposals, their were some amazing ideas which will hopefully be of massive benefit to the Met. Another brilliant event we’ve hosted in partnership with the Met and all their fantastic officers who work so hard to support the local community.”
We will keep everyone posted with the next stage of the process and any updates from the Met.