I’ve been following the Government’s Kickstart scheme, thinking how great it would be to induct some young people to our sector, and came up with a few projects across Social Vision where a young person could really benefit from the ethics of working in our sector, make contacts and networks, access a wealth of experience and take part in purposeful activity.

So with this in mind, I got a bit giddy and thought I’d look into the scheme. And fell at the first hurdle!

Any potential employer has to be able to create 30 jobs! 30 jobs! Wow, that’s a huge number, especially in our world where most organisations I work with don’t have 30 staff in total, nor the capacity to create 30 new positions.

I did, however, notice the caveat that organisations can join together to create this many positions, which got me wondering if we could create a ‘Social Kickstart’ collaborative here in York, where we pool our organisations to create 30 positions, which we can then share between us?

Young people could (depending on the scheme’s rules) have a varied and insightful 6 month placement across a number of different organisations. Or we simply each create one or two new positions and select from the pool of candidates.

Now don’t get me wrong, this wouldn’t be an easy process. There would be lots to consider, mostly from a capacity and administrative point of view. I also get the feeling the scheme is looking for more construction/manual type employers.

But I thought I’d throw it out there and see if any local social enterprises, charities, small social purpose organisations, creatives, or ethical businesses would be interested in exploring a collaborative where we could access Kickstart. Our collaborative could include anything from socially-conscious bars and restaurants through to local charities, freelancers or start-ups.

Imagine the impact we could have on the city with 30 young people entering the workforce understanding our sector, the benefits of what we do,  some of the challenges we face etc? 

So for now, if you’re interested in Kickstart but can’t create 30 vacancies, drop me an email (joe@social-vision.org.uk) and I’ll set up a Zoom/Teams call where we could explore some of the barriers to accessing the scheme and determine whether it’s worth progressing.

The Government Guide for the scheme can be downloaded here