Ahead Partnership are just one of the partners working on the DesignMyFuture project over the next three years. Ahead Partnership’s work on this project is led by Sophie Greenwood, Head of Operations, and Lola Wilson, Marketing & Communications Manager.
For 15 years Ahead Partnership has been bringing communities together by addressing their needs, tailoring solutions for the challenges they face and providing employers with creative, innovative and relevant programmes of activity that will engage and inspire young people from all backgrounds.
Ahead Partnership was founded in Leeds, UK by Stephanie Burras CBE who, as a Partner at an international law firm, took part in a mentoring programme with school students in South Leeds that helped shape her vision for a social enterprise that could bring organisations of all sectors and sizes together to maximise the potential of their local communities.
Stephanie helped to inspire the DesignMyFuture project by bringing her experience of innovative and stimulating careers programmes into discussion with Dr Marc Fabri and Dr Mhairi Beaton, with a desire to explore how we could reach and inspire the most marginalised groups of young people about career choices using the latest technology.
Ahead Partnership has a wealth of experience in engaging hard-to-reach or disengaged young people, and most of our work focuses on helping raise young people’s social capital and confidence where they may have little or no family experience of employment.
Since we launched our education engagement programme we have worked with over 200,000 young people, helping to inspire and motivate them to identify and develop the skills and qualities they have that will help them to succeed in the world of work. This includes new migrants to the UK, students with English as an additional language, young people with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), young people with autistic spectrum conditions, young parents and young people from other hard-to-reach backgrounds.
Throughout this three-year project we will be managing and collecting evidence of the dissemination activities that all the partners take part in. This will include publishing regular news and updates about DesignMyFuture, helping to engage young people in the UK in the research and co-design phases of the project and helping to promote the learning events taking place in each of the partner countries at the end of the project.
We look forward to sharing more news and updates from DesignMyFuture as the project progresses.