Impact Level 2 Case Study
Wildhearts: Year 9 Employability Mentoring Programme
Impact Level 2 Case Study
Wildhearts: Year 9 Employability Mentoring Programme
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Wildhearts: Year 9 Employability Mentoring Programme
Context
Context
WildHearts is an organisation dedicated to equipping young people with the competencies they need to successfully transition into the world of work. A prominent example of this mission in action is their Year 9 Employability Mentoring Programme, delivered in partnership with Nestle.
The programme is specifically designed for Year 9 students, providing them with early exposure to professional environments and expectations. The main challenge learners undertake involves participating in interactive, activity-based workshops facilitated by corporate volunteers.
These workshops are deeply focused on practical employability and the application of key skills in a real-world workplace context. The programme operates on a highly impactful scale; throughout 2025, the Nestle Employability Mentoring programme successfully reached and supported 1,295 individual students.
How the programme has achieved Impact Level 2
To achieve Impact Level 2, which centres on "Reflecting on essential skills," the WildHearts programme carefully structured its approach to ensure learners could meaningfully evaluate their own progress. The programme intentionally focuses its core activities on specific Universal Framework steps related to creativity and teamwork, ensuring targeted skill development.
The introduction of these skills begins with the facilitators. During comprehensive training sessions, Nestle volunteers are formally introduced to the Skills Builder Universal Framework and provided with concrete examples for engaging students using consistent language. Consequently, when volunteers deliver the workshop, they explicitly introduce creativity and teamwork to the learners at the outset, ensuring the students understand the terminology and the day's objectives.
Crucially, to meet the criteria for Impact Level 2, a dedicated reflection moment is built directly into the core workshop structure. Following the main activities, students are guided through a specific reflection section where they take a step back to self-assess their performance, reviewing how effectively they applied creativity and teamwork and considering how they might improve these skills moving forward.
Benefits for the organisation
Benefits for the organisation
WildHearts chose to align with the Skills Builder Universal Framework because they recognise that equipping young people with essential skills is crucial for preparing them for the modern world of work. A primary motivation for this alignment is the immense value of establishing a "common language" for skills, which ensures consistency across all their programmes and corporate partnerships.
By embedding this common language, WildHearts ensures that students who participate in the employability mentoring programme leave with a much clearer, actionable understanding of how to utilise their skills. Ultimately, this empowers learners to meaningfully connect the workshop's activities to their wider lives, giving them the confidence to articulate their abilities as they pursue their future educational and career goals.
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