Cardiff and Vale College have been selected as the Lead Partner in one of six collaborative projects for the British Council/Foreign and Commonwealth’s I-WORK (Improving Work Opportunities – Relaying Knowledge) Programme.
Operating between selected partners in the UK, South Africa, India, Ghana and Malaysia, the funded project addresses the ‘Fairer Future’ theme of the Commonwealth Summit, with emphasis on promoting the interests of 60% of the Commonwealth’s population who are under 25.
The objectives of the project are to develop capacity in employer-led inclusive education practise among partners, and then to pilot activities capturing results to feed into policy dissemination events.
The first of four stages of the project took place in South Africa on the 23rd July with a series of Leaders workshops to define the strategic framework of the project. This will be followed by the practitioners of the project meeting to devise solution focused pilots. The Pilot projects will then be delivered in-country and the results will be collated and each country will host national workshops involving all 6 clusters.
Mary Kent, Vice Principal of Cardiff and Vale College, attended the Leaders workshop alongside Martin Condy, Senior Manager for Employer Partnerships.
“We’re delighted to be part of this collaborative project and will be working to collate a number of case studies across the colleges involved to demonstrate the innovation and uniqueness of large employer partnerships,” she said. "The Leaders workshops successfully agreed a framework for establishing Employer Advisory Boards in key sectors, and a framework for collating Labour Market Intelligence.
“Moving forward, we look forward to chairing regular conferences with the partners to progress the project and will host the practitioner event in October here at CAVC”.