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Update 15 of 15: Future Foundations are delivering NCS Chesterfield

Future Foundations is excited to announce we have been selected to deliver the National Citizen Service (NCS) programme in Chesterfield starting this Summer.

We have a fantastic history of delivering NCS across the country, to find out more click HERE

We are about to launch a number of great roles for this programme, so if you would like to join our NCS team as a volunteer or staff member this Summer visit our JOIN US page to find out more.

NCS SUMMER 2015

Update 14 of 15: Invest in Your Future!

We are excited to launch our new programme, created with Kaplan and Tesco Underwriting, which will lead to young people securing employment.

Our aim is to inspire young people about future opportunities within financial services and improve understanding of the industry and job opportunities it presents.

Read More Here

We are offering a programme with training and support for young people interested in finding out more about the financial services who are currently at schools local to Tesco Underwriting.

Participating students will then have the opportunity to apply for apprenticeships at Tesco Underwriting starting in September 2015.

Update 13 of 15: "Welcome to the new FF Coaches"

On the 25th and 26th April we hosted a Coach Induction weekend at the University of East London.

Alongside the new faces we had fantastic support in delivering sessions  from experienced Future Foundations (FF) coaches who have worked with us in our Network for many years. The FF Network consists of youth coaches, volunteers, tutors, course directors, operations directors and alumni.

The weekend end allowed us to share what makes an FF programme great and the coaches had the chance to deliver session plans ahead of our busiest delivery season.

There was an extremely high level of energy, engagement and knowledge sharing across both days and we are extremely excited to see these talented coaches start their FF journey on programmes this summer.

Update 12 of 15: "The FF office is moving!"

After starting off with several house and office moves, in 2009 Future Foundations settled into 31 St Johns Hill for 6 happy years.

So with some fond nostalgia but huge excitement we can officially announce we are moving offices!

Never ones to fall too far from the tree, our new base will be Shakespeare House on Lavender Hill, Clapham, view HERE

We know that St Johns Hill has been the place of many, many BBQ’s, training sessions, late nights and hard work for lots of you and we would love you to share your favourite memories of your time here.

We will soon announce the date for a ‘Farewell to the Fun Factory’ party and would love to see you there!

*Watch this space for Jon’s blog article on ‘What Makes a Home’*

Update 11 of 15: "Introducing Team TED Fridays!"

This year at FF we have launched ‘Team TED Fridays’. This is a time to come together as a team and watch a TED talk of someone’s choice and follow up with a (lively) discussion afterwards.

Andy kicked off the inaugural Team TED Friday on 20th February with Ricardo Semler’s – ‘How to run a company with (almost) no rules.’ You can watch it HERE.

On 6th March Alice led with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘We should all be feminists’, watch it HERE.

On Friday 24th April we running the next Team TED Talk, if you would like to join us at the FF Office and participate in discussions on ideas worth spreading come along from 5pm. We would love to see you there!

Who is TED?

TED is a nonprofit, global community, devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less).

They welcome people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world. People who believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world….exactly what we believe at Future Foundations.

Visit Ted.Com Here

Update 10 of 15: "Announcing new Partnerships for 2015"

We are pleased to announce some of our new partners for 2015 include:

Tutor Fair – We attended a training day for Tutor Fair, a ground breaking organisation which provides private tutoring for young people in the UK. Their promise is that for every student who pays, Tutor Fair gives free tutoring to a child who can’t.

Oxbridge Guardians – Oxbridge Guardians provides a bespoke guardianship service to Chinese Students wishing to study at schools in the UK. They provide a compassionate and professional service for our students, students’ families and other stakeholders such as agencies and schools.

Emirati Foundation  – The Emirati Foundation are sponsoring two places on the Global Social Leaders programme for 2015, we are looking forward to adding the Emirates as represented countries this year. The list now includes; UAE, Canada, Kenya, China, Thailand, Jordan, India, Germany and the UK.

Junior Social Apprentice

We were commissioned by Wellington College to design a 3-day social action programme for Year 9 students called Junior Social Apprentice. We have been working closely with community partners across Birmingham & Manchester to challenge young people to think about the themes of social action. We had an incredible response from charities wanting to get involved and will be working for the first time in partnerships with the organisations below:

Coffee4Craig Uprising City Year Food Cycle Fare Share Life Share BeatFreaks St Basil’s Impact Hub Birmingham City University Manchester Metropolitan University

Update 9 of 15: "Future Foundations transforms its online systems"

Over the last 6 months, Future Foundations has been developing an exciting new online system which is transforming how we operate on a day to day basis and how we keep in touch with our alumni, staff and partners.

Just some of the examples of what we can do so far:

  • Releasing and monitoring the new Work Pack system 
  • Collating and issuing social action feedback to students 
  • Capturing all HR processes from full time employees and Network team
  • Processing applications for programmes including Global Social Leaders
Throughout 2015, we will continue to develop this platform. Some areas we will be exploring:

  • Creating free online workspaces for young people and their social action projects with free resources, mentoring support, and impact tracking
  • An online platform/portal for Network delivery teams to communicate with their peers, including accessing online training, delivery materials, and collating feedback
  • Detailed evaluation and impact reporting across all our activities, ensuring that we can shout about the amazing things that young people are doing as a result of their involvement with Future Foundations
  • Developing a structure to support other similar organisations to achieve the same things we are

We hope you are already seeing the changes behind the scenes, and are as excited as we are about the potential offered.

Update 8 of 15: "Future Foundations supports Social Action manifesto launched by Rt Hon David Blunkett MP."

Future Foundations is a member of Generation Change.
Together we have developed a manifesto to achieve our vision and we outline 5 key actions that Government must take if it seeks to achieve the #iwill campaign goal to grow social action by 50% by 2020.
To see our five asks click the button below:

  SOCIAL ACTION MANIFESTO

Our vision is all young people in the UK being actively involved in high quality social action that builds the skills and character they need to address our country’s most challenging social issues.
On 18th March 2015, the Rt Hon David Blunkett MP officially launched our manifesto at a House of Commons reception with senior MP’s in attendance.

Update 7 of 15: "Future Foundations goes to Westminster."

Future Foundations have been on the road…to Westminster! We want to share with you some of the events and occasions we’ve been invited to recently:
  • On Monday 16th March, Jon and Alice attended the Character Awards ceremony at Lancaster House. They were proud to take with them one of our recent graduates from the Summer NCS programme, Lauren.
  • On Tuesday 17th March, Alice attended an event at the House of Commons to discuss a 14-year study into young people and democratic engagement.
  • On Wednesday 18th March, Jon and Steph are taking two Summer and Autumn NCS Graduates to the Houses of Parliament to recognise the work of David Blunkett MP and his achievements with the NCS programme and social action in the UK.
These events are a fantastic opportunity for us to spread the word of the amazing work our Network achieve with young people on our programmes, as well as meeting like-minded organisations and inspirational speakers.

Update 6 of 15: "Future Foundations Transition Summer School has Launched."

Future Foundations has established a reputation for running fun and impactful Summer Schools, working in partnership with schools across the country since 2008. This year, in addition to our celebrated Chrysalis Summer School with Highgate School in North London (which offers Year 10 and 12 students from 20 local schools 3 amazing days of subject extension and team) we are excited  to announce a new and improved Transitions Summer School, funded by the Department for Education and available to all schools in the Greater London area.

In 2015 all Secondary Schools in the UK are eligible to apply for funding for Summer Schools to enable disadvantaged pupils moving into Year 7 to transition smoothly, understand what and how they will be studying in Key Stage 3 and help those who are behind in key areas such as literacy and numeracy to catch up with their peers. We have developed a programme which meets the needs of the funding and goes beyond to ensure every student participating has a summer of a lifetime making a shift in their literacy, confidence and creativity, giving students self-belief and a platform for success in secondary school.

Throughout March we will be contacting schools in and around the capital to offer this incredible and fully funded service, with limited availability for Summer 2015.
We expect to announce work opportunities to our Network after Easter….watch this space!

Update 5 of 15: "We have been selected as a winner of the Department for Education Character Awards 2015."

We are absolutely over the moon to announce we have been selected as a Character Award winner.

We want to highlight what this means for Future Foundations:

We have been recognized nationally as a leader in character education;

We have been identified by the Department for Education as an organisation with a model that other’s should follow;

The award allows us to continue the great work we do and extend the benefits of our flagship Global Social Leaders programme to Berkshire students who would not otherwise be able to attend.

Jon Harper, Alice Baines Hamblin and one of our NCS Summer graduates will attend the the Character Awards ceremony on 16th March at Lancaster House to receive their award from the Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan.

Update 4 of 15: "We are developing a new wave of FF youth coaches who will facilitate on our programmes this summer"

On Saturday 21st February, we brought together 24 potential coaches at Highgate School (our partner school for the Chrysalis Summer School) for an assessment day to identify future coaches who will take part in our programmes in the future and join our marketplace.

The day was led by our Head Coach, Lina Akbar who will also be responsible for their training and development. The day was supported by our office team and by two of our FF Network Leaders (Georgie Maddock and Andy Dunn). We will run a further assessment day this Saturday taking place at our offices in Clapham Junction.

The attendees at our first assessment centre included an incredible range of people with different backgrounds and experience. We were very excited to have a number of our alumni reaching back to those who participated in our programmes in 2009.

The next step will be for those selected from both days to join the FF Coach Network, to attend an FF Induction weekend which will be on the 25th and 26th April in London.

We are excited about what this new wave of FF coaches will bring this summer to our programmes and beyond.

Update 3 of 15: "We have announced our new staffing structure and launched Network opportunities."

Firstly, our updated roles and responsibilities for 2015 is as follows:

Office based roles:

Chief Executive Officer – Jon Harper

Chief Operating Officer – Pete Cuff

Senior Projects and Development Manager – Kate Suart

Senior Partnerships Manager – Alice Baines Hamblin

Projects and Communications Manager – Steph Burns

Programmes Administrator – Diamond Ofori

Network roles:

Head Coach – Lina Akbar

Programme Manager – Chrysalis Summer School – Sarah Militello

Secondly, we are going to be actively reaching out to our network to involve you in every element of our programmes.

To enable this to happen, we have launched a new ‘workpacks’ site.

We will be publishing roles, projects and opportunities only available to those who have worked for FF on a project before.

Each role and project will have a relatively short window of opportunity.

If you have worked for FF before and would like to be the first to hear about future roles and projects please register at the following link WORK PACKS

Please visit Our People page  to see our wider team which includes our advisors and network leaders.

Update 2 of 15: "FF has launched an online marketplace."

Our new marketplace enables our school partners the ability to book individuals from our network and gives all our coaches a window to shine, please take a look at the profiles of our first coaches who have signed up to be listed.

The marketplace is in soft launch phase, we will shortly add further information on the front end of our website, further coaches will be added and we have a number of plans for how it will be developed.

We would also like to take this opportunity to remind you about our call for new coaches to apply for our 2015 Coach Assessment, thank you to those who have already shared our call, we have had some fantastic applications already. The deadline for applications is 12th February.

MARKETPLACE

Update 1 of 15: "Call for Operations Directors for our 2015 Youth Leadership programmes."

This week we have:

Launched our recruitment for Operations Directors for our Global Social Leaders programme developed in partnership with the Wellington Leadership Institute, who will lead the programme with Course Director Nic Whitfeld
Launched our recruitment for the Operations Director for McKinsey Leadership Academy, who will lead the programme with our 2015 Course Director, Lina Akbar.

We have reached out this week to ask our network to share our call for coaches, please do also joining us in helping to find the best possible candidates to lead the operations of these incredible programmes.

JOIN OUR TEAM