REACH your potential

Please note - Funding for this programme has now ended and we are no longer accepting registrations.

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About REACH your potential

The REACH programme aimed to reduce youth unemployment in the Leeds City LEP Region by providing tailored support for young people to move into employment, education, and training.

We targeted local employers in an effort to tackle their skills gaps and shortages, to increase the capacity and productivity of their business and, finally, to secure enthusiastic new talent, carefully matched to the business needs.

The initiative was funded by the European Social Fund.

Key programme benefits

Providing additional support to existing local youth initiatives
Applying a specialist employer-led approach
Enhancing young people's lives through personalised 1-to-1 support

About our beneficiaries

We helped young people who met the following criteria:

Aged 16 to 24
Not currently in education, employment or training
Living in the Leeds City Region including Craven, Harrogate, York, Bradford, Leeds, Selby, Calderdale, Wakefield, Kirklees

How we helped

Our services were delivered by an experienced team of Employment Opportunity Advisers and covered the following areas:

Providing additional support to organisations already offering provision to young people who are not currently in employment, education, and training. This included expert employability advice and sourcing employment opportunities.
Supporting young people to reach their potential through bespoke, one-to-one employability guidance. This included CV writing, interview skills and job hunting.
Enabling employers to connect with enthusiastic, new talent as a way to fill their skills gaps and build a talent pipeline for the future.

We also drove the following objectives in our support for young people:

Exposure

A higher level of support to help individuals fully understand labour market and inform their career decisions.

Experience

Provide support with finding available roles as an employee or apprentice.

Employment

Assisting each the young person to move into sustained employment through our links with employers.

Hear from our participants

Below is a direct quote we received from a participant of the REACH programme.

"When I had my first meeting with him I wasn't exactly sure of what I wanted to do, after dropping out of university, but then he advised me of a range of different options and told me to put myself out there. After a month or two of applying to degree apprenticeships, two companies had seen my CV and reached out to me. Now, I have a full time job as a graphic design assistant in a great global company and attend university part-time."

Our team also helped Cameron, who, following his time on the programme, secured a job and felt a real sense of achievement and newfound confidence. Click below to read his story.