Have you ever received CV’s that are not up to scratch or thought about how you can pass on your skills and knowledge to others? Connect Dacorum can help you find the right project for your skills and time. Some examples of how we help provide volunteering activities with the emphasis on employability are: 

Dragons’ Apprentice Challenge

Connect Dacorum runs an annual Dragons’ Apprentice Challenge programme. The challenge recruits teams of school students (the Apprentices), assigns them a business mentor (a Dragon) and then pairs them with a local charity. The teams are given £100 and challenged to turn it into £1,000 or more. The Dragons provide advice and support to help their team achieve their business goal and funding target. Activities have included quizzes, dances, concerts, cake sales, market stalls, silent auctions, a casino, personal coaching and pop-up shops. All profits made by the teams go directly to their partner charity.

Participation in the Dragons’ Apprentice Challenge offers a win-win opportunity for all parties involved, creating the opportunity for excellent partnerships between local community groups and charities, businesses and young people, creating a stronger community over the long term.

Businesses – It provides a structured means to promote and encourage engagement between charity/community groups, local businesses and schools. It helps raise the profile of your organisation and the third sector in the area and it is a great development tool for an employee’s continual professional development.

Connect Dacorum has now run the challenge for eleven years and we have raised over £124,000 for local charities and community groups.

Employability Days

Since 2014 Connect Dacorum has been running Employability Days (CV and interview skills) at local secondary schools. It’s a very successful programme with around 2735 pupils who have gone through our programme and over 1,355 hours volunteered from the business community.

The half-day session (8.30am to 1.30pm) sees volunteers from businesses and charities using a specially developed pack to help small groups of students (8-10 in each group) go through an interactive morning of CV writing, application forms and interview techniques . The students are 14/15 years old so they are at the very beginning of their journey into thinking about their careers.

Mentoring

Be proud of your experience and pass on some of your knowledge to others. Can you offer your expertise in marketing, IT, law, finance, bid writing etc to a startup company or local charity? Through Connect Dacorum you can offer excess training day places to charities, offer work experience, give some technical advice to charities.