Todays children are the leaders of the future.
I speak with lots of people that were told they wouldn't achieve anything.
If their teachers met those people today, they would realise they couldn't be any more wrong.
Every day I meet disabled and neurodivergent leaders who have so much strength, resilience and determination.
But with every person like this I meet, I come across more who haven't recovered from the setbacks and comments made to them when they were young.
If you have followed All 4 Inclusion for a while, you are likely to know Dr Shirley Woods - Gallagher.
For anyone who doesn't know Shirley, she is a proud autistic lady. She is proud to be a business leader in Manchester. She is proud to say to people "I am the proof autistic people can succeed" when she hears people say otherwise.
And I am proud to have worked with Shirley on a number of occasions and to be able to call her my friend.
Shirley is a Director at The New Bridge Multi Academy Trust. In her role here she introduced me to Andrew Cox of Samuel Laycock School ( Samuel Laycock School - Home ) and I spoke to him about a vision I had called a Reverse Dragons Den.
Over a period of a few months I spoke with Andrew and Megan Daly-Greenham from the Springboard Project ( Spring Board Project - Home ) and I crafted a running order of how the event would look.
Once a date was confirmed, we went about finding businesses to take part in the event. Personally here I want to thank Andrew as he helped out massively with this. Whilst I haven't done a post event review yet, I have decided to build a pool of businesses willing to take part in future events. I am pleased every business who took part at Samuel Laycock have confirmed that they would like to be considered again.
After a quick introduction from me, the businesses took in turns to spend five minutes on stage.
They would pitch to the students (who were dragons for the day) about their job and business for five minutes. Within this time students also asked questions to the businesses. There was then a pressure moment for the businesses and student gave immediate feedback by showing them a green panel if they would want to work with them or a red panel if they didn't.
As you can see from the short video clip above Karim Samani was happy with the feedback he received.
The engagement from the students was amazing. Everyone got involved and really supported the businesses.
Each business shared truths about things like flexible working, what they do on a day to day basis and did their best to try to get as many greens as they could. It is worth pointing out here that as the panel was green on one side and red on the other, in any footage taken from behind the students we want to see the red side.
Samuel Laycock School invited some other students within the New Bridge Multi Academy Trust to take part too so more than one school got to benefit. But it doesn't stop there.
Students were involved in the whole production of the morning.
In addition to those taking part in the event we were welcomed by students who took drinks orders from the business leaders and delivered them. This helped students talk to adults that are new to them, boosting confidence.
Students who have a dream of working in a kitchen prepared the breakfast. We have sausage, bacon and vegetarian sausage sandwiches, fruit kebabs and sweet treats too. This was amazing and the students helped serve and ensure everyone was full.
Finally we had students who have an interest in media taking photos and videos throughout the sessions. Within a couple of hours they had loaded their first video on to YouTube (see below).
When breakfast was finished the students sat in small groups on the tables to speak to the different business leaders. Again they were asking lots of interesting questions and the businesses were getting really involved with this. I'm pretty sure if they were able to make job offers to some of the students they would have done on the spot.
After a brief summary of the morning (and some gifts), the students were asked what they learnt from the session. This is the important bit for the school. For me, I hope every student and business left the session feeling better than they did before. Having that extra bit of confidence to do what is right for them and for others.
For every student apart from Oliver, the day was done. But as the businesses gathered on the stage, Oliver was in charge of taking group photographs. He offered to do this using every persons phone, instantly using different tech each time capturing great images without needing to ask for guidance.
Huge thank you to the businesses for making it happen.
On stage we had
Karim Samani from Wellbeing and Ergonomics
Paula Jackson McDonald and Hannah Plumb from The Alchemist
Paul Wilshaw from Zally
Glenn Hyde from Worldpay
Jonathan Fletcher and his assistance dog Georgia from The Wheelie Good Travel Company
Katie Cope from Keppel Leopard Creative
Emma Wilson from The 20% Club
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