Last week the Community Trust team were invited on behalf of Kent Supported Employment to attend the Kent Choice live event at the Kent Showground in Detling.
Kent Choices live is an interactive careers event for young people and the general public to explore work and career opportunities, to help those making decisions about their futures, and those who are supporting them.
It has been running for five years and has grown from 600 people attending to over 4,000 visitors. The Trust were attending to promote our highly successful apprenticeship programme alongside launching our new traineeship programme, exhibiting within the Kent County Council disability section and was a huge opportunity to interact with pupils and schools within Kent.
Day One saw the team speaking to jobseekers and students who are or will be looking for employment. Many students were unsure on what they would like to do when they leave school in June and July and our work proved very popular and the team were inundated with CV’s and enquiries about both programmes.
It was also great opportunity to network with other training providers, recruitment agencies and schools who were very interested in the programmes with a view to getting involved in the future.
Community Trust Apprenticeship Co-ordinator, Freddie Wilson said “This was a massive opportunity for us to capitalise on our successful apprenticeship programme and look for new apprentices and for those who felt they were not quite ready for an apprenticeship to start a traineeship with us in September. We had a very productive couple of days and were very entertained with the Karaoke on the stand opposite”
Mark Parrin who is Supported Employment Co-ordinator at the Kent County Council added “Having Gillingham Football Club involved not only added a dimension of vocational learning to the event but enabled students to be made aware of the various training opportunities available through the clubs current apprenticeship and traineeship programmes, which encompasses support with all students including those with additional learning needs. By having one of your current apprentices present it gave other young people the opportunity to find out face to face what it was like to be an apprentice and worked well for this prestigious event”.
To find out more about both programmes please contact Freddie Wilson, WWilson@priestfield.com or 01634 350125.