How Aspire programme is lifting the lid of Aycliffe Business Park for our young people
BRIDGING
THE GAP
PICTURES: CHRIS BOOTH
Aycliffe Business editor Martin Walker talks to Aycliffe Business Park Community board members Thomas Prentice and Sarah Monk, who are leading a groundbreaking careers programme to inspire our future workers
A
bold new initiative from Aycliffe Business Park Community is proving to be a game-changer in bridging the gap between education and employment for young people in South Durham.
What began as a small pilot named Business Safari has now evolved into Aspire – a largescale careers and enterprise programme that has already introduced hundreds of local schoolchildren to the world of work on their doorstep.
The Business Safari pilot, initially led by Kerina Clark, Sarah Monk and Thomas Prentice, was a simple but powerful idea: take a group of young people and give them the chance to step inside real businesses, speak to staff, see operations in action and gain first-hand experience of the diverse opportunities across Aycliffe Business Park.
It involved a small number of students visiting Newton Press, BTS Fabrications, Stiller Warehousing and Distribution and The Fish Tank on the business park.
The success of that trial laid the foundations for Aspire, now led by Sarah and Thomas – who have expanded the programme into something with real impact and potential. Thanks to a £ 10,000 grant from the Great Aycliffe and Middridge Partnership( GAMP), Aspire was delivered over three separate days.
Around 430 students from Woodham Academy, Greenfield Academy and Bishop Auckland’ s King James Academy took part, visiting 10 different businesses including BTS Fabrications, Ebac, epm, Excelpoint, Husqvarna UK, NC Group, Optimum Skills, Stiller, The Work Place and South West Durham Training.
The aim is simple but ambitious: to ensure every young person in the area knows what’ s available to them locally – from apprenticeships and training routes to careers in everything from engineering and logistics to technology and professional services.
“ You can’ t be what you can’ t see” For Thomas Prentice, Aspire is not just a boxticking exercise for schools – it’ s a real, working solution to a growing problem.
“ Business Safari was really the launchpad for what became Aspire,” explains Thomas, business development manager at Stiller Warehousing and Distribution by day, as well as a passionate ABPC board member.
The magazine for Aycliffe Business Park | 19