Enriching education, employment and citizenship

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Let Us Introduce Ourselves

Our work helps young people navigate pathways to educational and career success and become confident, active, role model citizens. At the same time it helps employers’ access talent from within Britain’s diverse communities.  This work is especially vital at a time when post 7/7 Britain grapples with the challenges of the influence of extremism, and the impact of gang, gun and knife crime.  The objectives underpinning our work are to: improve educational-attainment levels; strengthen community cohesion; and achieve a greater equality of employment outcomes.
 

As well as directly enriching the lives of the individuals who participate in our programmes WF seek to inspire, and indeed, challenge them to make a positive contribution to Britain's economic and civil life. We also seek to demonstrate to wider society that multi-ethnic and multi-faith communities add substantial value to the economic, social, and political well being value of the UK. 
 

Once young people value themselves and are valued by wider society then we are able to develop and sustain a truly inclusive Britain.  The WF works to achieve all these goals at a national, regional and local level through our core programme outcomes: Lifelong learning & employment and Leadership & Citizenship.

 

WF was forged in the aftermath of the 1980s race riots as an outcome from the Windsor Conference in 1984, hosted by HRH the Prince of Wales. The Conference of business leaders, government and community leaders looked at the causes of the unrest, and at solutions to issues such as the barriers that Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) undergraduates face in the employment market and the challenges employers face attracting good quality BME graduates.
 

WF was established in 1986 to help young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds to maximise their individual, social and economic talents and in doing so change UK society for the better. Our founders understood that working in partnership was the best way to achieve these outcomes and address inequality, social injustice and prejudice. This is exemplified in the partnerships WF has had and continues to maintain with leading UK employers from the private, public, and voluntary sectors; and global employers, government departments, public bodies, charitable foundations, schools, colleges, universities, community groups and parents and guardians.
 

Research has shown that more BME young people continue further study after compulsory schooling than other groups. Additionally a higher proportion of British born BME young people attend institutions of higher education. However many individuals from BME backgrounds do not go on to maximise their talent and potential. Barriers do exist today. BME students are less likely to find employment upon completing degrees, and the relative rates of unemployment or under-employment for adults from these communities are on average twice as high as that experienced by their white counterparts. Improving this situation means ensuring that talented BME individuals succeed and that different groups of BME people are measurably seen to progress. This premise guided the creation of WF in the mid-1980s, and remains the cornerstone of our work.

 

WF's vision for UK society is ‘a nation in which the talents of all the people truly shine. A nation in which there are no barriers to success because of race or creed, and where the brightest and the best can take their rightful place as leaders in their workplaces and in their communities'.
 

Our mission is to help realise this vision through ‘enriching the education, citizenship and employment’ of people, particularly those who are of BME origin. This mission involves promoting excellence in education, employment, and citizenship and helping ensuring talent emerges, succeeds, and is deployed in leadership positions.
 

Our purpose and charitable objective is to educate, train, and develop people, particularly young people of BME origin, who are studying, with skills and qualities such as decision making, leadership, team building, organisation, planning, self awareness, motivation, and effective communication in order to:
 

1. Improve their academic achievement;

2. Encourage and enable them to take an active part in civic life in accordance with the principles of good citizenship;

3. Guide and assist them in exploiting their educational and employment options; and

4. Enhance their ability to secure and progress in employment opportunities focused around careers in industry, commerce, the professions, public administration and the arts.

WF’s Unique Approach

Our approach is based on principles similar to leading global companies' ‘high potential’ and ‘talent’ development programmes and the training of elite athletes and sporting champions. In common with such programmes, the WF recognises that nurturing and enhancing talent cannot be left to chance. Take Lewis Hamilton and Andy Murray, from a very young age both received specialist training and mentoring to help nurture their talents and to help them emerge as champions. Talent needs to be nurtured in a structured way to ensure it is cultivated, motivated and inspired with a single purpose - to ensure it grows to realise its full potential and develops to be the best that it can be. Whilst based on similar principles, WF’s approach is unique. The combination of five factors gives our programmes their distinctive high impact. These are:

• Firstly, targeting young people at key stages of their educational development, such as the risk of exclusion from school (AIMS and NEET programmes), the commencement of GCSE courses (Junior Fellowship programme), the making of career choices during further education (Succeeding in STEM programme), critical stages of undergraduate study (Leadership Programme), and the transition from graduation to employment (Passport to Employment Programme);
• Secondly, by associating participants with others of similar talent, ambition and motivation but of different ethnic, cultural or social origins they are encouraged to freely express themselves, examine their history, and enhance/develop the skills that will help them navigate the challenges they will face as they embark on the next phase of their educational or professional careers;
• Thirdly, focusing on more than just participants’ academic development and employment. We focus on their personal growth as citizens of contemporary UK society through programmes that encourage independent thinking, challenge participants to be fully conscious of their responsibilities as well as their rights. Diversity, Excellence, Community, Integrity, and Leadership, known as our five tenets, are the organisation’s core beliefs/behaviours. Together they represent our ’DNA’ and serve as our competency framework;
• Fourthly, providing participants with ‘tutoring’ and ‘guiding’ by programme leaders whose credibility comes in part from having themselves succeeded in achieving significant success, and often, have done so in the face of institutional racism or other bias; and
• Fifthly, partnering with leading employers, educators and parents and carers.

Targeting the whole Spectrum of talent