EPG Blog Series: Green Corridor’s Advice

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Green Corridor, an education and employability initiative, is another one of our features for the Effective Practice Guide to Youth-Led Green Job Creation Initiatives in Europe. Green Corridor offers volunteering opportunities and accreditation in the environmental sector for youth aged 16 to 25 in the UK. It has been around for fourteen years.

In this post, we’ll be quoting the advice of Green Corridor’s CEO Jean Rolfe because it’s comprehensive and brilliant. Any initiatives that cater to young people should heed her words:

  • Think about what you want to do and why – this is not an arena for easy money although many seem to think so. It’s hard work, with great highs and lows, that takes a lot of time to become established.
  • Reputation cannot be built or created over night. Reputation it is built upon high quality consistent outcomes that have the learner at the heart of the decision-making process.
  • A charity is only as good as its staff – investing in your team, valuing your team and ensuring your team value and support each other ensures a solid platform upon which to support the young people you aim to reach.
  • Being flexible, understanding, patient and genuine helps to build trust and honesty amongst the young people you aim to support – they will see through anything that doesn’t have these values firmly embedded.
  • Supporting young people is not a quick win but a journey of discovery that is as unique as the young people you support.
  • An initiative needs to be a considered business objective that matches the skill set and purpose of the organisation and requires considerable investment with regard infrastructure, staff training and, in Green Corridor’s case, accredited status.
  • Key lesson – doing a bit of everything doesn’t work. Our success is fundamentally tied to the decision to narrow our scope and become excellent at what we do rather than average at everything we touch.

Interested in blogging for us? Email editor@peacechild.org for more information today.

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