Yesterday me and another Youth Ambassador, Laurence, went to the #JobHack organised by the Cabinet Office. The main aim of the day was to look at certain policies and data to then find solutions to problems from the policies. At the start of the day we had introductions from Matt Hancock, Minister for the Cabinet Office, Gerard Grech, CEO of Tech City and Hadley Beeman of the Government Digital Service, who was also the Job Hack facilitator.
After that we then formed teams to rectify these problems in my team I had Peter Kelleher from Smarterthinking Solutions LTD, Luke Perera from FE Analyst BIS, Mary Susan Barry from Transparency BIS and Joe Philipson from the National Citizen Service. In Laurence’s team he had Archie Griffiths, Nicola Herbertson and Chris Podgorney. In those teams we chose one policy or set of data and found the solutions.
My team at the start wanted to look at the youth voice of young people who are NEET. We then looked at the barriers they may face when looking for employment. We found that most of the data was already out there, so it was just to find a way to present a solution.
The solution we came up with was an interactive quiz that young people could take throughout their lives in education starting from the age of 11 up to 18. With a simplified version for lower key stages and more developed version for higher key stages. It could be introduced into schools for times such as form time and PSHE as a quick quiz.
The quiz would ask young people questions about careers and then give them a more narrow perspective and the older they get the more narrow it will become. This could help not only careers education but the thought of careers in younger teenagers and children.
Laurence’s team were looking at young people who were NEET, and how to provide local information and give specialist support to help NEETs successfully take up opportunities to earn and learn.
The solution they came up with for this problem was a platform which visualises accessible opportunities for NEETs and young people locally by using maps and more visuals to display job ads. They have created a mini site for this for demonstration which can be viewed here.
After about four o’ clock, everyone had to then stop and present those ideas in 3 minute presentations to the group. After a quick round up, everyone said their farewells, and we all departed. The day was really interesting on the whole, and there were some great ideas floating around the room. The only thing I would say would be better for a next one would be to introduce more about a Youth Voice with more young people.
