Arrival Education — Activity Post — January 2020
Summary: The AE Programmes Team hit 2020 at full-speed, running 8 events, from 3 different programmes, with 250 unique attendee opportunities, totalling over 400 hours of engagement and learning.
In addition to these events with our corporate partners, The Tesco Executive Mentoring Programme has continued apace, with mentoring pairs meeting for the first and second 1:2:1s.
Many of mentors went above-and-beyond expectations by setting up meetings with colleagues and inviting their mentees to events that they were hosting at Tesco HQ.
We are also delighted to confirm another annual partnership with GSK and to announce a new partnership with UK Brokerage firm Peel Hunt.
16–18 Social Mobility and Talent Pipeline Programmes:
The majority of our delivery in January was focussed on our Social Mobility and Talent Pipeline programmes for 16–18-year-olds.
For students on our programme, The Access Network, we held two Success Skill workshops — one at Artemis, on Stress Management and the other, at Investec, on Networking Success. These sessions, which are run by the Arrival Education team, 5.30–7.30pm at our partners’ offices, give students a unique opportunity to learn the skills needed for work and life. Volunteers from those corporate partners help bring the learning to life, as well as giving students the space to talk and reflect.
It is invaluable for our students to connect with the volunteers, whilst our volunteers always tell us that they get a tremendous amount from attending the sessions too. They report improving their skills in the following areas: Coaching, Mentoring, Communication, Influencing and Team-working skills. We love welcoming back previous volunteers (we get a lot of repeat participants), as well as guiding new volunteers into the experiences.
“The sessions are really interesting, you learn a lot and it is good to give back and help others.”
We also launched 13 new coaching pairs on this year’s Developing Leaders coaching programme for volunteers from Investec and Artemis to work 1:2:1 with one of the students on The Access Network over the next 6–9 months.
Students and Volunteer Coaches, who have been carefully matched by the AE team, met for the first time at a group Ice-Breaker event, held in their offices.
At these events, the AE team reveals who will be working with whom.
The new pairs participate in a series of exercises that help develop the foundations of their relationship. It also gives the coaches a better understanding of what their coachee’s ‘Big Picture’ for a ‘Successful Life’ is, as well as offering an insight into how their coachee wants to develop over the course of the programme.
“The ice-breaker exercises made it really easy for me to get into some deep and honest conversations with my coachee.” Volunteer Coach
“My coach was really easy to talk to and I feel really excited about our next meetings”. Access Network Student
January was also a busy month for our two Investment Programmes — Invest for Success with Investec Wealth and The Artemis Profit Hunt, with Artemis.
Each programme had a trading meeting, where the students' teams met with their mentors to review the progress of their portfolios and to look ahead.
Invest for Success also had the mid-programme Presentation Evening, where all teams presented back on a company they had chosen to invest in. The teams from Liverpool who were unable to make the event in-person did a great job presenting remotely. We were delighted that the winning team was an all-female team, the ‘Venturists’, from Langdon Park, one of our partner schools in East London. It has proved a real boost to the team’s confidence.
