Introduction to the graduate "First Steps" conference
Our Partner - Future Foundations
The Work Empowerment Foundation has partnered with Future Foundations to create the foundation's first conference event empowering a specific niche of working people. Future Foundations are...
.....pioneers in training and support services for graduates, students, school-leavers, and pupils to help prepare them for the real world and the transitions within education.
Why graduates?
Graduate skills shortage has become a prominent employment issue in the past years...the number of graduates on the market has been increasing at unprecedented rates, yet employers are still complaining that they are not able the recruit the kind of graduates that they need. Graduates are having significant difficulties in getting their first employment...and employers are having significant difficulties in recruiting graduates.
Out of the two groups, the graduates are the ones with most immediate need...and they are very open and eager to empower themselves NOW. They do not want to wait for years whilst larger structural changes take place - they are willing to work with the market situation as it is NOW to find jobs and other opportunities that that will enable them to take their FIRST STEPS in starting successful careers.
How the graduates fit with Work Empowerment Foundation
A key role of the Work Empowerment Foundation is to facilitate empowerment of working people. We do this by working with niches who are willing to do what it takes to empower themselves NOW in order to improve their working situation...the niche for graduates fit this criteria.
Furthermore, as a foundation we intend to provide opportunities for graduates to gain experience and leadership skills by providing volunteer work and part time work to support us deliver of our services, conferences and projects. The aim of this is to enable graduates to gain the work experience that they require to demonstrate their employability and fit with their target organisations.
Why a conference?
The foundation is launching the empowerment of graduates with the FIRST STEPS conference. This conference is planned to take place in November 2007. The social conference format provides the ideal forum to bring together the key stakeholders to start the self empowerment of graduates by:
- Discussing the key issues from an empowerment perspective
- Exploring how graduates can empower themselves in different contexts
- Exploring the potential collaborations that can made to create win-win results for graduates, universities and employers
- Giving feedback on some of the empowerment tools that have been developed by the foundation to be run by graduates for graduates (graduate peer mentoring employability programme; graduate empowerment events; on line empowerment communities)
- Joining working groups to carry on the conversations that have started in the conference
Graduate conference research
Issues to be researched
Our research for the conference will concentrate on the following strands:
- Graduate Market - How the market looks from the graduate side (suppliers) and the employer side (customers)
- Generation Y - How the characteristics of the graduates are changing
- New Organisations (link to be provided later) - How the characteristics of organisations are changing
- Graduate Skills Gap - What exactly is the skills gap and what are the key drivers of the gap
- Current Graduate Empowerment Landscape (link to be provided later) - What are the other empowerment initiatives that are available for graduates and who are the key players in the graduate market
Graduate Empowerment Tools developed by the foundation
We will also doing research for the three tools that the foundation itself is developing to empower graduates - these will be demonstrated at the conference:
- Graduate Empowerment Events (link with more details will be provided later)
Work Empowerment Foundation will be working with Future Foundations to develop a Graduate Empowerment Event that will be run every 1 - 2 months depending on time of year. We plan to facilitate a team of graduates to run this event for other graduates.
- Graduate Employability Programme (link with more details will be provided later)
Work Empowerment Foundation is working with Energize Solutions to develop a peer mentoring programme to help students to develop employability skills through mentoring delivered by graduates who have been working 1 - 2 years. The students will be able to demonstrate that they have employability skills by running a community project that covers the three sectors (public sector, private sector and the third sector).
- On line Graduate Employability Communities (link with more details will be provided later)
Work Empowerment Foundation will be including graduate topics on its Empowerment Website service. These topics will be moderated by groups of students volunteers. The foundation will be partnering with Future Foundations to design and develop these communities.
Posted by: Hina Patel
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