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22nd February 2024 Spotlight on... Career Insights and Building Skills

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Students at a KPMG office visit in Canary Wharf

Our Career Insights and Building Skills programmes have two distinct aims: *provide young people the opportunity to connect with volunteers from a range of industries; and *start to develop the core and sector-specific skills to support informed choices about their career pathways.

While these programmes are available nationwide, we work closely with our partners to ensure that this support really reaches those who need it most.

We know that young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in coastal, or rural communities are disadvantaged not just by their financial background, but by where they live. Employment opportunities are often fewer, and less varied; health outcomes are lower, and in many cases, the sheer distance from larger towns or cities means that they are less likely to benefit from extra-curricular opportunities.

The impact of this not only affects young people, but the communities in which they live, as well as local businesses which are not accessing the wealth of untapped talent - which would undoubtedly benefit everyone.

Rise, championed by ICAEW and KPMG WorkReady are two of our partnerships that have been designed around a collective understanding of the unique and diverse challenges faced by schools in areas outside of the traditional catchment areas of major companies and large employers.

This year the Rise programme supported 5,694 students through 100 workshops. 48% of those workshops were in rural or coastal areas of the UK, connecting volunteers from professional services firms with the talented but often under-resourced young people in areas including Bodmin, Northumberland, Gloucester and Cumbria.

Supporting this Rise workshop in Barnstaple really motivated me to work with more rural communities and I think I will sign up to some more.

For six years, our KPMG WorkReady partnership has supported young people in Social Mobility Coldspots across the country including the Black Country, Norwich and East Cambridgeshire, with the workshop providing an insight into emerging technologies and the future of the world of work.

Each year over 3,000 young people take part in a WorkReady session, and the success of that programme precipitated an expansion of our KPMG partnership this year, with the introduction of the Opening Doors to Opportunities initiative.

Opening Doors to Opportunities brings young people into KPMG offices across the UK, affording students the chance to experience a real work environment.

The Skipton Academy’s Year 9 students had a truly transformative experience during their visit to the KPMG offices in Leeds. This initiative, aimed at opening doors to opportunity, provided them with a firsthand insight into the world of work while fostering the development of core transferable skills.

You can read more about our impact in 2022-2023 by downloading our Annual Report. Or visit our Programme pages to book a Lightbulb Moment experience.

You can read more about our impact in 2022-2023 by downloading our Annual Report. Or visit our Programme pages to book a Lightbulb Moment experience.