Eye on Business & Education
4C UR FUTURE BUILDS ON SUCCESS FOR 2020 A series of regional events this summer will set out to expand the 4C UR Future concept around Northern Ireland, enabling as many 13-year olds as possible to gain insight into their future opportunities.
T
he 4C UR Future ‘Live’ Events follow on from a hugely successful pilot event that was held in 2019 with more than 1,200 young people from eight local schools gathering at Ulster University’s Jordanstown campus for a day of sector-related skills and challenges. The pilot was supported by over 30 local companies from across a diverse range of sectors and aimed to highligh young people’s talents and potential career choices. 4C UR Future, established and run as a not-for-profit enterprise by one of Northern Ireland’s leading business figures Rose Mary Stalker, sets out to do much as its name suggests...enable young people to foresee their own future. “That’s the very purpose of what we do,” says Rose Mary, an experienced engineer, former senior manager at the Ford Motor Company and recently appointed as the new Chair of Invest Northern Ireland. “We want to help young people to become the best versions of themselves as they possibly can. “We exist to inspire, inform and enable young people to make the most of their opportunities, to take the path that’s
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right for them and to contribute to the economy as well as to society as a whole. “Our approach is specifically designed to enhance equality of opportunity. We try to enable each individual to explore their own unique combination of positive attributes, talents and learning styles, and to align them with emerging work trends and employability criteria.” Once there, 4C UR Future Live is not a dry and boring information-based event. Instead, the young people take part in a range of interactive games and work-based simulations, specifically designed to draw out and identify their key strengths, all with a view to helping them to make better-informed subject choices and career planning. 4C UR Future sets out to work alongside key employers, companies and the main sector groups within the Northern Ireland economy to inform young people about the skill sets that are desirable both now and in the future.. An industry-led steering committee has already been established to finalise the plans, and to make the all-important connections with the business sector. The committee will be working with Business in the Community to ensure strong links are forged between business and education.
4C UR Future aims to run 5-8 live events on a regional basis in Northern Ireland this summer, working alongside local councils. “A good series of well-attended events means that we can impact on the education and career planning of thousands of young people in the region,” says Rose Mary Stalker. “Looking further down the line, it’s not inconceivable that we could touch on the lives of just about every 13-year old here in Northern Ireland, all 22,000 or so of them.” The regional events are being planned for the month of June and that’s a deliberate choice. June is the month when 13-year old have to make their all-important subject choices for GCSE study. “And that’s when these young people really need to start thinking ahead to their careers,” Rose Mary adds. “The world of work has changed beyond all recognition in recent years and it continues to change at a rapid pace. Traditional subject choices and traditional career aspirations simply aren’t as relevant or straightforward as they used to be, there is a huge range of new options and it’s vital that we get that message across to both
schoolchildren and their parents.” “We aim to demystify the confusion over careers. The world of work is changing fast and it can be difficult to keep up to date. It’s an area where, understandably, some teachers struggle and some schools admit that they don’t do very well. This year we want to expand our programme for teachers with relevant sector briefings..” Each regional live event will be supported by follow-on mentoring opportunities and the young people attending stand to gain a much clearer understanding of their own abilities and strengths. Rose Mary Stalker tells the story of one young person attending last summer’s 4C UR Future event held in Belfast. “One of the industry experts attending the event and watching the young people go through their paces noticed that this young man had an unusually high level of manual dexterity. And, when he was told this, it was clear that he’d never received that kind of praise before. “But does his manual dexterity mean that he’d make a great butcher, a great mechanic or a great surgeon? That’s the kind of question that we’d love to help him to answer.”
