Free hack day to tackle Youth Unemployment

As a contributor or reader of The Start Out I would like to invite you to attend a hack day on Wednesday 6 April to help tackle some key issues that young people face in finding education, training and employment.

I began The Start Out back in September and in just over 4 months we’ve already had 15 contributions, over 100 recommendations and thousands of views.

In addition I’ve had tonnes of people sharing their own experiences of the difficulties they faced in finding their first job and endless ideas from passionate people who want to make it easier for young people in the future. It genuinely feels like there are loads of people and organisations trying to understand and help with this issue.

However, the proportion of young people not in education and employment remains massive. In spite of the governments attempt to diminish the extent of the problem by making sixth form education compulsory, there is still nearly 12% of 16–24 year olds who are not in education, employment or training; that’s nearly 850,000 young people. And in addition the UK government regularly talks about the fact that not enough people go into careers in the industries that need it most. We are still not giving young people the right skills or the right guidance for the future.

Talking and writing about advice and help for young people to be able to choose, obtain and succeed in their careers is not enough. So I’m organising a hack day to get a group of young people together with digital experts, youth service providers, and anyone else who is generally interested in this problem, to come up with ideas around how we can use technology to help solve some of the difficulties young people face when first starting out in the world of work.

Please do sign up to attend. It’s free, there’s food and hopefully the day will be hugely fun and productive.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Tess

P.S. If you would like to support in other ways than just attending please get in touch.