Based on the popular TV series, The Apprentice, Community-Apprentice is an inter-school competition requiring young people to develop and demonstrate competencies such as leadership and enterprise.

“I believe that if we want to harness the potential of young people, then we need to get business more involved in education, particularly to develop skills like leadership, problem solving and resilience. Community-Apprentice offers a great way to achieve this and I urge you to get involved.”

Sir Albert Bore, Leader of Birmingham City Council

In this case, Sir Albert Bore is taking Lord Sugar’s role. Unlike Lord Sugar,

he won’t be looking for the team which can make the most profit. As leader

of the City Council, he’s more interested in the social profit young people

can generate by making a positive contribution to the local community.

What he does have in common with Lord Sugar is that he will need the

input of his ‘advisors’, his eyes and ears out on the ground who will, in this

case, include over 200 volunteers drawn from local companies. They will

be supporting young people to develop and reflect on their competencies.

The competition is underpinned by a ten-month extra-curricular

programme, delivered with the support of local businesses, schools and

charities supported by youth charity Envision. The structured process

supports teams of young people to identify a problem within their

community, create a solution, plan a project and see it through.

As well as enhancing their employability skills, Community-Apprentice

develops young people’s empathy and understanding of social issues. Its

legacy is therefore a pool of young people that are motivated and able to

build a better society for all of us.

Programme Overview

ONE city-wide competition THREE challenges

The Film Challenge Exploring the Problem

Sir Albert challenges the ‘community-apprentices’ to make a film to raise awareness of a social or environmental issue.

One of the most important things a coach can do is to inspire a person to dream. That’s why the

Envision experience starts by asking young people what ‘one thing’ they would like to see changed in

society.

Participants then look at the reality. Community-apprentices explore real problems, which may

involve carrying out surveys with local stakeholders, consulting with decision makers and speaking

with community groups. Collaboration skills are developed as the team work together to agree on a

single issue for their project.

Once an issue is chosen, students learn more about their subject through research and meeting

external experts who are often part of Envision’s network.

Equipped with this knowledge, teams work to meet a deadline to produce a short film which, through

a combination of passion and evidence, seeks to win hearts and minds about why their cause

matters.

The Boardroom Challenge

Making a difference

Sir Albert searches for a ‘can-do’ team of problem solvers able to make a positive contribution to the community. During this phase there is a lot of activity between

meetings and at weekends. The nature of the activities

depends upon the project, ranging from transforming a

physical space to delivering peer education workshops.

Through continued weekly sessions, we coach young

people to solve their own problems and hold each

other to account to keep their projects progressing.

In July, teams come together at a major event at

Aston Villa Football Club to present why they feel they

deserve to win Community-Apprentice. Young people

present the problem they identified, what they did

about it and the difference they made. Their business

mentors support their case by highlighting examples

of how they have developed key competencies

throughout the experience.

The Pitching Challenge

Creating Solutions

Sir Albert searches for teams able to develop and present a convincing case for social investment.

In weekly coaching sessions, students are supported to

structure their plans to clarify how their project will have a

positive social impact and how they will measure this.

Community-apprentices use a range of communication

methods e.g. letters, meetings and presentations, to

engage potential stakeholders, and secure support,

including resources that they need for their projects.

One team is selected from each school to go forward

to the presentation challenge in December. Volunteer

business mentors host additional mentoring sessions

at their offices, giving these students the opportunity

to prepare and practice their pitches in a professional

environment.

Community-Apprentice is all about getting young people to take the initiative. They decide what they want to change and how they want to do it. They assign roles and hold each other to account to get their team working effectively.Our role is to provide them with a structure to keep the process moving forward and to

provide trained staff and volunteers who can coach young people to clarify their goals,

plan how to achieve them and tackle problems along the way.

Activities are designed and facilitated to enable young people to develop a core syllabus

of competencies including creativity and enterprise, communication, determination and

resilience, planning and problem solving, leadership, collaboration and confidence.

Throughout the ten-month process we help young people reflect on their learning. At

the final stage, students are offered added support from business mentors who help

them to develop the vocabulary necessary to articulate their competencies, the lack of

which puts many young people at a disadvantage in the job market.

The mentors help young people to develop personal competency profiles which

evidence, through examples, the skills and qualities they have developed throughout the

project.

The competencies we develop are all relevant to employability, but we also want to

ensure that young people apply these attributes to social objectives as well. We achieve

this by developing another very special quality: empathy. Our activities raise young

people’s awareness of social problems and we make problems real by giving young

people direct contact with those affected or, in cases where these people are highly

vulnerable, those directly supporting them.

Once passionate about their cause, we use facilitation and coaching skills to support

young people to have the biggest social impact they can, helping them to clarify goals

and impacts and assess whether the activities they develop are likely to achieve these.

Through this approach we ensure a double benefit, delivering outcomes for both young

people and the wider community.

Our Approach

Environmental Vision (Envision) is registered in England and Wales. Company no: 4422128. Charity no: 1095328

FIND OUT MORE, Unit 413, Scott House, The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Birmingham, B9 4AA

0121 772 7685, birmingham@envision.org.uk

Coaching Support

Business Mentors

Youth-Led

Competency Framework

Volunteer Mentoring

Guided Reflection

It’s a win-win combination: communities benefit from great projects, young people improve their employability skills and companies get employees who are better coaches and facilitators.

Our corporate partners share our vision of a society in which young people

grow up with a sense of social responsibility, a desire to get stuck in and

the skills to make a difference. Like us, they also recognise the need to

prepare young people for the world of work by building skills such as

resourcefulness, resilience and problem solving.

Our ‘community-apprentices’ develop these skills whilst working together

to solve a problem affecting their community. Our volunteers are there to

help them at key points during the process, where a bit of extra support

can make a big difference.

The great thing about our business volunteers is they are best placed to

convince young people that the competencies they develop through social

action are important to prospective employers. By becoming consciously

competent, young people are able to sell themselves more effectively.

We’ve developed a range of opportunities (set out overleaf) to appeal to

different interests, skills and responsibilities. As a result we’ve engaged

staff at all levels, from graduate trainees to senior directors. Through

experience, everyone develops a belief in their capacity to make a

difference, individually and by working with people very different from

themselves.

Employee Volunteering

“We’re supporting Community-Apprentice because it’s a great way for our employees to get involved with local schools, helping young people develop the sorts of skills we know they are going to need for work. I urge other businesses to get involved.”Eddie Fellows, Highway Network Manager for Amey

Choose from the following opportunities

‘Dragon’

Is there a Peter Jones or a Deborah Meaden wannabe in your company? We have an opportunity for some fun role play with a serious purpose.

Each of our partners is offered a place for a

volunteer to sit on a panel of investors at a Dragons’

Den-style event at which young people pitch for

funding for their social enterprises.

Each Envision team can pitch for up to £400 and

every team gets something. Dragons confer to

agree how much. Sometimes they decide to give

an up-front investment with a second tranche

conditional upon the team taking certain actions.

This can be used to offer motivation for a struggling

team or as a stretch for one that needs it.

Dragons offer feedback on the projects and

suggestions for things young people could think

about to make their ideas as impactful as possible.

Skills Mentor

Each of our Community Investor partner companies provide two or three team coaches for their adopted school.

Coaches generally work in pairs and run between

one and three sessions depending on how much

time they are able to give.

The first session is designed to help young

people order their thoughts, clarify their project

goals and identify and assess options for

achieving them.

The second is focused on supporting a team

of young people to rehearse and perfect their

pitches which they make to secure project

funding at an event in December.

A third helps young people to prepare to go ‘into

the boardroom’ in June to present why they

should win Community-Apprentice.

Because young people really value the opportunity

to see a working office environment, coaching

sessions (which each last between one and two

hours) are ideally provided in your workplace.

We organise all the logistics and getting the team to

you, ensuring your time is given where it can make

the biggest impact.

We understand that our corporate volunteers

are busy people, so we provide plans including

suggested activities and questions for all sessions to

limit the preparation that is required.

We also provide interactive training (which usually

takes three hours) in basic coaching techniques.

As well as helping volunteers be more effective

in supporting young people, many report in our

evaluations that they have found the coaching skills

and techniques developed to be genuinely useful

back in the workplace.

CV Mentor

Our CV mentors provide one-to-one support to help an individual young person to reflect on their experiences.

With the support of the business volunteer, the

young person will produce a personal competency

profile which evidences, through examples, the

skills and qualities they have developed throughout

the project.

Many young people lack a vocabulary to articulate

their competency to prospective employers,

putting them at a significant disadvantage in the

employment market.

This is where our business volunteers can make a

big difference. We need between 5 – 20 volunteers

who can get together on one day for two hours to

support young people. As usual we bring them to

your offices, taking care of all logistics. This ensures

that volunteer’s valuable time is put to best use,

supporting young people to improve their CVs.

One mentor is then asked to volunteer to take part in

the ‘board-room presentation’ advocating on behalf

of young people what skills they have developed

through their project.

“They have shown themselves to be excellent problem solvers and team workers, as well

as knowing when to use their own initiative to move the project forward”

Kasmir Sanghera, Head of 6th Form, Small Heath School

Interview

This engages large numbers of volunteers in a single afternoon and is great for team building.

Our speed interviewing event gives young people

an opportunity to practice articulating their

competencies verbally in fun and fast-moving mock

interview exercises.

It’s a high energy and inspiring event which gives

everyone a real buzz.

It will take place out of your office and participants

therefore need to be able to give a half day to

volunteer.

This is a great way for junior staff to develop their

interviewing skills and also helps develop appraisal

skills, particularly in terms of giving feedback

positively. Others just want to use existing skills for a

good purpose.

“Today has really shown the importance of giving young people a chance to work with people from business who have experience. Because there is so much talent here, what is needed is just a bit of nurturing and focus and when they get that it’s obvious great things can be achieved.”Anthony Anderson, Director of Anderson Financial

“I believe this is an essential experience for anyone who wants to progress in his or her organisation and become a successful leader or manager because it is a key tool in the trade for developing people to their full potential.” Jenny Zhao, Risk Analyst, EDF Energy

“For me, working with our business mentors was one of the best things. It’s important that you get to meet these kind of business people, because there’s not really anything else like it. We haven’t really had any opportunites like this at school and I think it’s been really good for us.” Faisal Ali 17, Small Heath School

Environmental Vision (Envision) is registered in England and Wales. Company no: 4422128. Charity no: 1095328

BIRMINGHAMUnit 413, Scott House

The Custard Factory

Gibb Street

Birmingham

B9 4AA

0121 772 7685

birmingham@envision.org.uk

BRISTOLUnit G 5, The Office Bristol

St Nicholas House

31-34 High Street

Bristol

BS1 2AW

0117 315 5113

bristol@envision.org.uk

LONDON3rd Floor

63 Gee Street

London

EC1V 3RS

020 7253 1677

london@envision.org.uk

“Community-Apprentice was ideal for us as a company which commits time and resources into developing our staff. Staff from all levels of the company can get involved in an opportunity where we can not only develop ourselves but also support the next generation of talent in Birmingham” James Miller,Project Manager, Interserve