Legacy Careers Programme!

What is Legacy Careers ?

On Thursday I sat down with Kate Suart FFs Senior Project Manager and the project manager of Legacy Careers to find out more about this unique programme for schools in the boroughs of Hackney, Walthamstow, Newham and Tower Hamlet.

Legacy Careers (LCP) is aimed at raising the aspirations of teenagers in East London schools, teaching world of work skills as well as creating awareness of the opportunities that are on local young people’s door step in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Many of the young people although living a stones throw away from the park didn’t know about the opportunities that it had with so many developments in the Park. For example ,many of the young people didn’t know that the Park had a legal obligation to hire local people. Legacy Careers targets 12-14 year olds as well as having Year 11 & 12s as mentors for the Year 8s. Split into groups of 15 in a team, a mentor guides and supports the team through various challenges and activities.

This program runs from July to December, achieving its aims through a series of activities as well as exposing young people to businesses and business volunteers, culminating in a final event in December. Each team has the challenge of designing their own business for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and presenting their business plan to the whole year group with the winning team from each school presenting against each other in the final event in December.

The judges look for Innovation, Design & Creativity of the business, Presentation of the business, Materials displaying the business, Sustainability of the business, Clear plan of the business and a Promotional & Marketing strategy. The winning team of the final event gets the fantastic prize of tickets to watch the Lions (London’s Basketball team) in action at the Copper Box in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as well as other prizes being given such as going on the ArcelorMittal Orbit and the Top mentor gets 2 week work experience with LLDC.