Member Article

FSB collaborates with South Yorkshire colleges to combat youth unemployment

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) in South Yorkshire has “great concern” for the issues surrounding youth unemployment and is collaborating with colleges in Barnsley and Doncaster.

In the UK 920,000 young people aged 16-24 are unemployed, representing 20% of young people.

The FSB is collaborating with the colleges in two events to encourage local businesses to rise to the challenge of providing apprenticeships and improving enterprise skills.

As well as colleges, other collaborators in the project include the local councils in Barnsley and Doncaster, Young Enterprise and various private sector training organisations.

The FSB Regional Chairman, Gordon Millward, commented: “The political emphasis on maximizing the numbers of young people entering universities has clearly failed.

“We hope to encourage small businesses to recognise their responsibilities towards developing a workforce of the future and do their utmost to provide jobs and training placements for the next generation.

“We are staging these events to strengthen the bridge between business and education and we urge businesses to come along and explore how they can play their part in addressing the future workforce skills challenge.

“If one-in-four SMEs in the UK took on an additional apprentice, the youth unemployment issue would disappear overnight. Long-term economic regeneration can only be nailed down by engaging with young people and providing the prospect of a secure and prosperous future – a prospect which former policies have demonstrably failed to provide.”

The events take place at 5:30 - 8:00pm on Thursday 6th March at Barnsley College and 5:30 - 8:00pm on Tuesday 1st April at Doncaster College. They are open to all businesses of any size and are free to attend. To book, ring the FSB regional office on 0114 261 7132 or email ro.southandeastyorks@fsb.org.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .