Enabling Enterprise Trip to gumtree
“I wish we did something like this when I was at school.” As humans the possibilities of our potential is boundless, this is best witnessed in the innocence of a child. One of the children assumed that a visit to Gumtree would entail a tour around a factory. I won’t dwell on the expectations of the visiting students as offices are the modern hubs of human productivity once held by factories. We must also remember that by the time these children enter the workplace in a decade’s time the novelty of a desk, zip taps and video conferencing may be but a distant memory as office will enviable evolve with technological advances.
This trip was Gumtree’s third Enabling enterprise trip, a non profit organisation which aims “to equip young people with the skills, experiences and aspirations they need to succeed in life.” Enabling enterprise currently works with over 100 companies and businesses including PwC, Virgin and Waitrose. The students they work with vary in age from ages 5 -18years old, but this time around our trip was made up of 30 local school students approximately aged 9 years old.
The trip followed a similar format to previous trips. The students were split into 6 groups of 5, and each team came up with a catchy names; gumnology, gum-science and smart tree. These teams were set the task this time - to create an app to improve communication between Gumtree employees. The day started with a introduction to Gumtree from the Head of marketing.
The teams were each assigned an employee to interview and probe, while on previous visits to Gumtree the volunteers came from the product and dev team, this time I emailed the entire company and got a broad spectrum of job roles. The students had an opportunity to interview the staff who afterwards showed them the 3 floors that make up the Gumtree offices. Volunteers included myself, Adam DAubney, Ali Khan, Matt Anders, Hannah Wilson and Kimberley Dobbs. The students were instructed to look out for demonstrations of ‘enterprise skills’ such as Creative thinking, problem solving, leadership and more.
During the visit it was smiles all round, with both employees and students are happy to see each other. While walking around the students were encouraged to strike up conversations with employees.
The day concluded with each of the 6 teams presenting to Bas Anneveld, Gumtree’s Chief Technology Officer who chaired a judging panel made up of some of the volunteers from earlier in the day.
I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who made the day possible, firstly the volunteers, the team at enabling enterprise for doing the majority of the work, eBay security for keeping the students safe and eBay facilities team.
For more details there is a blog post from enabling enterprise
