KACEY WILSON Year 10 Ambassador 2020-21

I am in Year 10 and I am the SNA YouNG Ambassador.  I work with 6 other ambassadors that attend other schools across Rushcliffe and support our careers teacher, Mrs Caunt at South Notts. This role is a one-year programme that gives you many employability skills that will help me stand out in the future and add valuable life experiences to my CV. Applying for the role was a little different last year, as the interview was by Zoom, but this tested my digital skills and I was so pleased to be accepted.  It gave me a great sense of achievement.

The skills which I am building range from communication, presenting, confidence, adaptability, organisation and resilience.  I am also enjoying networking with others from different schools and business organisations too!

Due to Covid restrictions, the weekly sessions are now via Zoom.  There were introduction and icebreaker sessions and now I am finding that my Digital Skills are massively improving.  We have learnt about social media in more detail and the audiences and how to improve skills for digital marketing.

Usually before Christmas there is a YouNG Christmas market that we would help to organise, however, due to COVID again, this couldn’t take place in 2020.  The markets allow young people to sell their own hand made products and create a profit for themselves.  This is a great way to showcase entrepreneurship and creativity.  The Young Project experimented with virtual markets, however these didn’t work so well.  Once restrictions lift, we hope the markets will be back on this summer.

Currently the Ambassador group have just finished helping YouNG to increase their employer network.  Their Career Talks are a great way to help students learn about jobs and labour markets.  We hope to build on these experiences and we are providing Live employer talks which young people can sign up to.

I will update my diary again soon and I hope that you have got a clearer idea of what the YouNG project can offer a Year 10 student.  I recommend it and you get a small wage as well, which is very useful.  I have also enjoyed linking to the SNA careers programme and hope that employer talks and in school events can start again when it is safe to do so.