4 minute read
Education
A spotlight on the BALI Chalk Fund
Since its inception in 1975, the Association’s very own charity, the BALI Chalk Fund has supported students within the landscape sector in a variety of ways, such as travel scholarships to broaden horizons and incentivising students to excel by offering prizes for the best students in each landbased college. We are delighted that nearly fifty years on, the latter initiative is still alive and kicking in 2022.
With many exciting new plans in fruition, this makes this possibly the most exciting point in the charity’s history.
Enrichment Programme
Over the past few years, the BALI Chalk Fund has been working with selected colleges to improve the employability of their students. We are all too familiar with the funding issues surrounding all educational establishments including those serving the land-based sector.
One impact of the funding crisis is that students rarely receive industry recognised certification for the highly desirable skills acquired during their time at college, skills such as pesticide use, use of abrasive wheels or even ROLO health, safety, and environmental training. This often results in employers having to re-train and certificate students as they join the workforce, costing the industry many thousands of pounds in the process.
To combat this, the BALI Chalk Fund has identified that by spending modest sums of money, to cover registration and assessment fees, students not only gain the knowledge and skills required, but also the certification enabling students to leave college “work ready”, complete with PA1 & 6a/w, abrasive wheels certificating, ROLO
cards and even CSCS cards giving them access to construction sites. By applying the funding at this stage, it’s proving to be an extremely costeffective initiative.
The BALI Academy
I’m sure many of you have heard that the Association is launching its very own academy, with the aim of combating the acute skills shortage within the industry. The BALI Chalk Fund are hugely excited by the prospect of the Association delivering world-class learning at strategic UK locations, utilising the very best facilities and trainers in the landscape sector. As the details emerge, the Chalk Fund will be seeking ways to support the academy and ensure these first-rate courses are accessible to all.
It may be that we develop a range of scholarships, extend our enrichment program to include academy attendees or sponsor course development. In any case you can be sure that we will be leveraging our funds as much as possible, and focussing on both the student and the employer benefits.
Become a Champion!
As our ambitions grow, so too do the demands on our funds, that’s why we launched our Chalk Fund Champions scheme in 2021.
We now have a number of industry partners we call “Champions”, whose commitment and subscriptions support our efforts to make a difference. In return they can display the BALI Chalk Fund “Champion” logo on their paper and digital stationary, website and other marketing material. They also refer to their industry support in tender or award bids to demonstrate their responsible approach to helping develop the future of this great industry. Best of all they get to benefit from more, better quality, work ready graduates leaving colleges and training establishments and seeking employment with companies like theirs and yours.
There are three tiers of BALI Chalk Fund Champions and below is a short explanation of what your support could enable us to achieve:
Bronze Champions
£250 per year
£250 per year will ensure our enrichment programme produces five students leaving college with a LISS/CSCS Card and are ready to go on your site, this is a saving to future employers of around £600.
Silver Champions
£500 per year
£500 per year is equal to the prize money awarded annually to the nations “Top Student”.
Gold Champions
£750 per year
£750 per annum will see you becoming the ultimate supporter of training and development in the landscape sector. Spending the money at the critical point enables our enrichment programme to leverage your funds, saving future employers many thousands of pounds.
We really hope that you can see the benefits of supporting the BALI Chalk Fund and you could even come up with ingenious ways of raising your subscription funds, and the allimportant awareness of our work.
So go on, why not challenge one of your local competitors to a 5 a side match or a tug of war, the loser buys the winner a years’ Champion status, and you’ll all be “Champions” in our eyes!
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