Young homeless kick-start their careers

Citation

(2003), "Young homeless kick-start their careers", Education + Training, Vol. 45 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2003.00445dab.005

Young homeless kick-start their careers

Young homeless kick-start their careers

Homeless young people are learning the skills of sports reporters, to improve their literacy and communication skills and gain the confidence to re-enter full-time education. The "Tackling Skills" programme is organized by BBC Training and Development's skillXchange team, together with youth-homeless charity the Foyer Federation and a number of football and rugby clubs throughout England. It "kicked off" with two projects in London with Queen's Park Rangers Football Club and London Wasps Rugby Club, and has now been extended to Walsall, West Bromwich Albion and Bolton Wanderers football clubs.

Each project takes on three young homeless people and trains them in the art of sports reporting. During the five-week programme they visit their local BBC studios to see first hand how the BBC's professional journalists cover matches. The young people receive detailed training in interviewing techniques, researching and reporting. They use digital recording equipment and then test out their new-found skills by reporting on a major match and interviewing the players – all with close guidance and support from a BBC mentor. As part of the scheme the participants also get access to their local participating rugby or football club and its training ground and receive advice on working in a major club. The initiative follows a pilot in west London involving BBC Sport, skillXchange, six homeless young people aged between 16 and 25 years, and London Wasps Rugby Club. The experience was so successful that two of the young people have been given the impetus to get back into education.

A lack of education, training and job opportunities is often at the roots of homelessness among young people. Figures from the Foyer Federation show that 50 per cent of the 10,000 young people it helps each year have no qualifications, 33 per cent have been excluded from school temporarily or permanently, 17 per cent have stopped attending school by the age of 14 and one in four has a history of truanting.

Clare Choak, from BBC Radio 5 Live, who took part in the London scheme, has won a six-month attachment to work full time at the Foyer Federation to help with the initiative, which will involve more than a dozen BBC staff. Andrew Page, head of fundraising and business partnerships at the Foyer Federation, commented: "We have used information technology, driving and music as ways of re-engaging young people and have been looking for a sports programme for some time. Now we have found it, and the way it is developing, it could become one of our biggest initiatives yet."