CATE – Customised Access to Training for Employment
In January 2011, funded by the Working Neighbourhood Fund and in partnership with Bournville College, Gecko Programmes initiated an intensive month long programme to recruit a number of unemployed Creative and Media professionals and prepare them for specific job opportunities.
This programme included detailed individual skills analysis, CV workshops, and presentations by Creative and Media Professionals on the sector, its skills needs and career pathways.
The programme also included a three day boot camp at the NTI in Birmingham where the candidates had to work on a commercial specification that would be used as part of their portfolio for interview.
The final stage was mock interviews, portfolio development and future career planning.
The final outcome was all 10 candidates got interviews, with 3 getting internships and a further 3 moving into full time jobs.
The process was so successful the package has been further developed and customised to fit different client requirements, these can be found here.
Future Jobs Fund
Since November 2009, Gecko has united with organisations to identify creative roles that are appropriate and supportive for young people entering the job market in this sector. GECKO has so far worked to deliver hundreds of jobs in three regions (West Midlands, East Midlands and the South West) for third sector creative, cultural, heritage and media organisations.
When this is completed in September 2011, this will have been the last of programme that has been of enormous benefit to young people to the third sector.
GECKO is a member of the Third Sector Consortium (3SC), the voluntary sector national lead for the Department of Work and Pension’s Future Jobs Fund, aiming to develop additional jobs for workless young people, in roles that are rewarding for the individual and also have a positive community impact.
EU Leonardo Partnership, July 2010
Gecko Programmes were contracted to review the competence requirements of Event Managers in the UK, and compare them with requirements of other nations in North West Europe
The key achievements of this work were the identification of better practices, the declaration of a European standard of competence, and recommendations to support the mobility of Event managers within this region of Europe.
LSC Data Burden
Client: Learning and Skills Council
Following complaints to the Information Authority, we were contracted by the LSC to analyse the alleged data-burden put upon providers to the LSC/SFA. We worked with the client to separate necessary data requests and data reporting formats from the unnecessary data burden.
A full report on the data burden and remedial action plan was published by the Information Authority, and we acted to ensure its completion.