Supporting young people is something we as an organisation are very passionate about and we do it in a number of different ways; our most well-known of which is our housing services in Southampton and Baskingstoke but also our youth work projects across the region.
In 2017 we started to initiate an Internship Programme with a range of local Universities and have gone on to create a programme with Southampton University with on-going internships with our Marketing Team, as well as looking at offering these in other parts of the organisation. We have also been working with Winchester, Southampton, Solent & Portsmouth Universities on supporting students with project-based assignments setting real life business challenges. Offering work experience is a vital part of a young person’s transition into adulthood and full-time employment.
Chrissie Heaver our Marketing & Communications Manager had this to say:
“We started our programme last summer with 8 students each working for 4 weeks with us, based within the marketing team and getting not only valuable office experience but also an opportunity to gain relevant experience in a business area of their choice. Since then we have been able to extend our programme to include term-time internships as well. We have had fantastic interns all who have been passionate about learning more about the YMCA, using their skills to help support the work we do, as well as learn new skills along the way. As an employer when looking at a CV especially for entry level positions if the candidate has taken the initiative to gain experience it really makes them stand out from the crowd.”
So far, we have been able to offer 12 students positions with a further 4 starting in the coming weeks. We look forward to the programme growing bigger and better.
'I thoroughly enjoyed my time here!...It was great to meet the YMCA FG family - everyone is super nice and helpful - and was also great to meet the 3 other interns. Working in the same space as the others definitely made time more enjoyable and most likely more productive. Also working more or less autonomously means that there is a real satisfaction to working to complete a given project.'
Matt, Intern Southampton University
If you would like to know more about the opportunities we offer contact us via email – volunteering@ymca-fg.org or visit our website and click on the Join Us tab.
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