Levelling the playing field for disadvantaged young people - Viewpoint Viewpoint careers advice blog

Levelling the playing field for disadvantaged young people - Viewpoint My social mobility charity, Leadership Through Sport Business (LTSB), recruits bright young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, with an additional focus on diversity and gender equality. After an intensive boot camp designed to prepare them for the workplace, we provide accountancy apprenticeships in major firms. I set up LTSB in 2012, and we’re now placing our sixth intake of 100 young people in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. However, it’s not the sort of thing that just appears overnight! My moment of clarity I began to realise there was a need for this kind of thing back in the 1990s. I was living in the US and working as CEO of inter-dealer brokers, Tradition Financial Services. While the US was leading the world in many things at the time, plenty still needed to be done in the interim in creating opportunities for inner-city young people. I’d had some contact with representatives at the State Department about putting together some data and helping get this message out, but nothing materialised. They seemed to think they had it in hand. A major influence on my thinking, and on my life, was 9/11. Tradition had offices near the World Trade Center, and like many in the finance world I lost many friends and colleagues in the attack. After the initial horror of the attack fades, you begin to think about what motivates people to do something like this, and you realise society’s responsibility to engage young people. Whether it’s radicalisation or more everyday threats of drugs and crime, nurturing ambitions and providing meaningful work are our best defences against the vulnerable being turned towards violence, or just having their abilities wasted. I love sport, which has long been used as a distraction from bad choices, and I wondered whether we could combine the appeal of sport with the worth of paid, meaningful work. It was important that this intervention was targeted â€" and I was clear on what type of young people could use this help most. Building partnerships There’s a politically invisible class of young people. They aren’t going to jail, and are unlikely to become benefit-dependent. They’re bright, talented, but trapped in Uber-ised, gig-economy underemployment. No sick pay, no holiday pay, no guarantee of hours, no ability to plan for the future. These young people don’t represent a cost to society in the way it’s traditionally, easily measured â€" the pounds they draw in benefits, or that are spent on imprisonment. But the cost in wasted potential, in lost engagement with society, and in the resentment of a system that does not value every member â€" that cost is huge. So I started looking around, knowing I was going to escape the city. I met with Premier League football clubs and realised their foundations were the best mechanism to deliver sports leadership skills.   I began partnerships with further education colleges to deliver Association of Accounting Technicians qualifications. Then it suddenly became real. My friends (now Lord) Jim O’Neill at Goldman Sachs and Michael Spencer of ICAP match-funded my start-up. We had an extraordinarily successful pilot with the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation and the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London, which proved the concept. Then growth: to West Ham and Chelsea in London, and Aston Villa, Manchester City and Liverpool nationally. In six years we’ve gone from just me, working the phone and persuading my network to employ our young people, to a staff of 11 who have worked with over 300 young people and profoundly changed their lives for the better. At which point â€" how can you stop? LTSB can only transform lives with the support of firms committed to social mobility. If you’d like to get involved, contact Cat Wyard (cat.wyard@leadershipthroughsport.org) for more details