
After raising over £12,000 last year for St Gemma’s Hospice, Charlton Morris are delighted to announce that we will be partnering with the OPERA Global Youth Foundation as our charity partner in 2018.
OPERA is a fantastic charity, dedicated to ending global youth unemployment - a huge problem which currently affects over 71 million young people globally. Working solely with recruitment agencies, OPERA is helping both the recruitment industry and young, disenfranchised people overcome the bad press they receive all too often.
The first way that OPERA look to tackle this issue is through their #thrive fund, designed to directly help young people with the costs associated with finding, gaining and staying in work.
When a young person does find employment, some costs are unavoidable and must be paid in order to even start or get to work. For a young person with no income or real support network, these costs can create an impossible barrier between them and work.
These costs include £23 for a birth certificate, which you need to prove your right to work. Or the £100 needed to buy a new suit to attend an interview. Or, the £179 for a travel card which gets you to work in the first place (and as we’ve heard recently, this isn’t reducing any time soon).
Many people are, or have been, lucky enough to access help from friends of family until they ‘get on their feet’ but the young people OPERA are looking to help may not have that option; there is no lack of desire to work, there are just some real, unavoidable barriers that can prevent them from doing so.
OPERA work with the idea that £500 will cover a full month of costs before a first salary payment, and their research has shown that, after the first month, a young person’s chances of staying in work long-term increase dramatically. Over 80% of the young people they’ve helped with the thrive fund are still in work after one year.
In addition to raising money, we’re also really excited about the prospect of using our skills as recruitment professionals to help prepare young people to secure a new role in the world of work. We’re looking forward to hosting workshops in our offices and having a direct, impact on the young people in our local area.
We’re extremely excited about this excellent cause, and we’ll be keeping everyone updated throughout 2018 with the details of what we’re getting up to.
We’ve not taken our time either – having already raised over £430 in December with some festive fundraising!
Everyone in the company is really looking forward to this partnership, and we hope for the support of our clients, candidates and network in 2018.
If you’d like more information on OPERA as an organisation, you can visit their website at www.weareopera.org
If you would like to support our fundraising with a donation to OPERA’s #thrive fund, you can do so on our page here: https://www.justgiving.com/company/CharltonMorris or, to donate up to £10 at a time, text CHMO65 to 70070