Wardleworth Community Centre hold training programme focusing on employment development

Participants in the Wardleworth Community Centre training programme

Wardleworth Community Centre has been able to run a 13 week training programme focusing on employment development thanks to recent funding from the ESF Community Learning Grant.

The aim of the project was to maximise the potential of those on the course to proactively and systematically identify and secure sustainable employment for themselves.

The employment development programme comprised of training and one to one mentoring support to ensure outcomes for those participating in the programme.

The training was delivered in half day training workshops, twice weekly and covers leadership, project management, communication and team working, being healthy for work, using diversity as a strength, going for a job and writing a winning application, succeeding at interview and planning for the future.

Project Manager, Mohammed Doulot Miah said: “We were very pleased to organise this training course thanks to the ESF Community learning funding. Based on our previous work with people in the area, we have learnt that provision of job search and CV writing is not enough, as there are underlying problems of low self-esteem, cultures of worklessness and very little skills capacity for people to improve themselves and make themselves employable on a sustainable basis.

“We discovered that CV writing and job search skills, whilst assisting in the short term did not really change any behaviour in the participants to a proactive and more positive approach to securing a job, nor were people gaining any skills which made them more attractive to employers and help them sustain themselves in employment over a longer period.”