Youth Enterprise Live!

Don't forget that we are going to be at stand 403 at Youth Enterprise Live next week (12-13th Oct) at Earls Court!
If you're at all interested in business, come and see us!  We will also be hosting a seminar 'Let's Talk S&M' on Saturday and a workshop 'So you want to be an Entrepreneur' on Friday.

The government’s youth contract is a farce... OFFICIAL !

Anybody involved in trying to actually deliver the Government’s Youth Contract already knew it was a farce and today a group of MPs reviewing it made it official.

“The government's youth contract is not enough to tackle the scale of youth unemployment”, a group of MPs has said. The youth contract provides £1bn for a range of schemes aimed at getting young people into work.

Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said the report showed the government's plan for youth jobs "is failing and we need to change course fast”. He added: "This is now a very loud wake-up call, at a time when the country is in a double-dip recession made in Downing Street."

The report talks about many reasons why it is failing miserably, such as it being largely targeted at 16-18 year olds without a SINGLE GCSE. This is a ridiculously narrow and meaningless criteria. Is it really only those without a single qualification that needs help? I think the average 8 year old could work out the answer to that question!!

The report talks about difficulties in identifying people who qualify. (That’ll be because the government cuts have ripped out the infrastructure that tracked and worked with challenged young people (youth workers and Connexions) in what was some unbelievably short-termist approaches to savings that is now coming back to haunt!)

But the real gorilla in the committee room was not mentioned but it’s a massive barrier to effective implementation - the inconceivably absurd levels of bureaucracy and punitive commercial terms attached to the contract.

The paperwork and administration involved for the youth contract and indeed many other such government schemes is truly astounding. Much of it is duplication and pointless bureaucracy. To actually deliver appropriate reporting and control it could reasonably be cut by two thirds. The photo above is of the paperwork for a 6 day course for 15 young people!! And what it means is that more time is being taken up on admin and paperwork than in working with the young people and that is surely outrageous. Why is the report not screaming about this?

The other major barrier is around actually finding quality providers to deliver the programmes. Providers only get paid for delivery 6 months in arrears dependent on successful outcomes, i.e. getting jobs for these young people without a single GCSE, who are competing with the other 2 million unemployed. This is a cash flow and commercial risk of epic proportions that few quality providers are prepared to take on. We know of at least 3 major providers of programmes for NEET young people who declined to even bid for the work because it was simply set up to fail.

If one was being cynical you could look at the T&Cs attached to delivery of the youth contract and think perhaps they were designed to be unachievable such that the much touted “£1billion programme” will not actually cost the government anywhere near that! Is it perhaps another elaborate case of Government Spin?

The risk of 1 million unemployed young people to the country is immense; social unrest, development of an underclass, to say nothing of the welfare costs and the immense waste of human potential. In light of this it is nothing short of an outrage that the government’s response to it in the youth contract is so totally and fatally flawed.

Eureka at Youth Enterprise Live!

We're pleased to announce that Eureka will be attending Youth Enterprise Live! on October 12th and 13th.  Our Director, Patricia will be presenting a seminar 'Let's talk S&M' - Top 10 sales and marketing tips for entrepreneurs and start ups.  She will also be running a workshop 'So you want to be an entrepreneur? Make it a reality!'  Please come and visit us on stand 320 to see how we can make Enterprise fun!
For more details please visit http://www.youthenterprise-live.co.uk

Inspiring the next generation

 Congratulations Team GB what an amazing performance at the Olympics and the Para Olympics!

Let’s hope that the legacy of London 2012 will be that we have a generation of kids who now want to get out there and be best that they can – whatever their chosen field.

Young people now have a whole host of the new heroes to look up to whether it be the poster girl of the games Jessica Ennis or those that were unknown before the games such as Max Whitlock who won two bronze medals in the gymnastics or David Weir in the para games  – surely these people are the role models we want our children to look up to as opposed to the ‘wannabe’ tv reality stars.

What has been so impressive about Team GB is both their performance on the sporting field and their attitude in both victory and defeat. None of the athletes believed it was their God given right to win a medal.  Whilst they all have a self-believe in their abilities all of them understood it is only through hard work and working with the experts in their field that they would reach Olympic glory. 

At Eureka whilst we hope that 2012 will have discovered the next Jessica Ennis or Bradley Wiggins our hopes are less of Gold Medals and more about seeing our young people gaining a renewed sense of self-belief.

Whilst only a handful of the next generation will be performing at Rio in 2016 or the Olympics in 2020 with the same self-belief, motivation and hard work who knows what our young people can achieve.

Having worked with the next generation via our NEET and school programmes we have witnessed what a difference the right training and support makes to a young person’s chances in life.  

We know that often what young people have learned from negative role models around them is poor work ethic, low self belief and low motivation. What we seek to do at Eureka is to help young people gain some sense of focus for their life and build their motivation and their skills to help them achieve success.

If the next generation can grasp this new found self-belief that our young athletes have shown then London 2012 will leave a lasting legacy that will have a profound effect on the nation both on and off the sporting field.

We were pleased to be invited to a debate on Youth Enterprise and Employment in the House of Lords recently, as part of the run up to Youth Enterprise Live.  Looking forward to being part of the show in October.

Could voice coaching help teachers control their classes?

Should teachers get voice coaching to help manage their classes?

A recent Sunday Times article discussed the effectiveness of tone and voice when controlling their classes. It discusses how getting the right tone of voice can be tremendously helpful for teacher's levels of authority and ability to control a class. Getting this vocal tone right can be challenging especially for some female staff.

      Another voice issue that teachers experience is protecting and taking care of your voice as a "tool of the trade", it's clearly an issue when too much strain is placed on the voice and results in teachers having to take time off with lost voices. There are many ways to protect against this.

If you'd like to know more about voice coaching and how it can help you enhance your authority within class, perhaps as a useful inset day topic,  please contact us.

Gaming the way ahead for NEETS

Gaming the way ahead for NEETS

For the nearly 1 million young million people who are classed as ‘NEET’ (Not in Education, Employment or Training) the future in the current economic climate is very uncertain. For young people who are lacking in qualifications their situation may feel very bleak.

For a number of reason students are leaving education unengaged, having not reached their full potential. If the UK is to tackle the rising problem of NEETS and all the associated problems that go with them it is key that we find a way to re-engage with these young people.

Eureka Youth has been pioneering new training methods for this sector of the NEET population. Their approach is to engage with the students using a medium that they enjoy and respond to; the world of electronic gaming.

Whilst at first glance if you were to drop in on a Eureka training course you may just see a group of young people playing on a Playstation. However if you were to stop and look more closely you would see the students developing skills in sales and marketing, ITC, CV writing, time management and project skills.

Electronic Games are an area that young people can relate to and more importantly it is an area they are willing share their opinions and knowledge of. At Eureka we’ve taken the Playstation platform to develop practical training that gives young people transferable skills that they can take to an organisation

One of our current programmes is using the popular game ‘Little Big Planet’ to introduce the concepts of sales, marketing to the group. During the 6 week programme students will develop their own business plans which will include the areas of sales and marketing, finance, IT development.  Alongside this the students will also be developing their ‘soft skills’ in CV writing, presentation, report writing and time management.

The gaming industry as a whole now makes more money than Hollywood and the UK is a leading play in the gaming sector. This is an industry which is constantly adapting with new product development, sales and marketing all playing a crucial part in the success of businesses operating in this sector making it a perfect choice on which to build our unique training around.

Eureka Youth offer training for both NEETS and Pre-NEETS and are currently offering training courses in the Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and London areas.