One thousand lives changed: Our campaign smashes goal for apprenticeships in a year
The number of apprenticeships created by the Evening Standard’s Ladder for London campaign to tackle youth unemployment has soared past the 1,000 mark.
Exactly one year to the week after our first 10 apprentices started work at Goldman Sachs, a total of 1,122 apprenticeships have been pledged by more than 400 London enterprises — smashing our goal of creating 1,000 new work opportunities in a year. Many of the firms that hired apprentices — including Standard Chartered and PricewaterhouseCoopers besides Goldman Sachs — have been so impressed that they have decided to take even more next year as well.
A total of 520 young people have already started their apprenticeships, having completed their training with our apprentice providers — namely City Gateway, the college consortium led by Hackney Community College and Peabody. The rest of the apprenticeships are to be filled shortly.
Prince Andrew, patron of Ladder for London, called our campaign “an invaluable initiative” that had caught the capital’s imagination and went on: “I am immensely proud of what has been achieved with more than 1,000 apprenticeships created through the partnership between the Evening Standard, City Gateway, the college consortium, Peabody and London businesses.
“I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a number of the young people for whom these opportunities are life-changing. I look forward to continue playing my part and hope we can further build this critical initiative over the coming year, not only in London but across the UK.” Almost 85 per cent of the apprenticeships we created are for white-collar jobs, while the rest are for jobs in the construction sector.
They have transformed the hopes of young people who 12 months ago felt frustrated in the face of a 25 per cent youth jobless rate, the highest in a generation.
