Last month Glasgow Chamber of Commerce together with the Herald launched our ‘Inspiring 500’ campaign to find mentors for young people who are not starting out in life with the advantages so many families take for granted.
The campaign is designed to support the work of Iain MacRitchie and his MCR Pathways Programme which has been working with schools in the east end of Glasgow for six- years and showing some impressive results.
The Herald has already been lending weight to Iain’s activities for some 18 months, helping to find mentors who can give encouragement, care and guidance on the skills young people will need to get a foothold on a career. We felt it was now time for the wider Glasgow business community to lend a hand in finding 500 mentors from amongst our members so that MCR Pathways can stretch its work across more of Glasgow’s schools.
Mentoring is a common feature of business life but it’s more often used to help those starting fresh in business or in the early stages of an existing career. ‘Inspiring 500’ takes a regular practice and makes it available to young people who just don’t often meet someone who has been successful in the business world and who might never get the chance to explore the possibilities.
This is another step in the Chamber’s commitment to spreading the positive impact of business to parts of Glasgow which don’t readily share in the city’s current economic growth. We take the view that it is in all our interests that as many Glaswegians as possible benefit from that growth. Whether you prefer to talk about fairness, social justice or equal opportunities you would be well wide of the mark if you think Glasgow businesses are not interested.
For sure some of the reasoning for tackling fairness may be pretty hard headed.
Glasgow is doing relatively well in developing and retaining its graduate talent -although we could always do with some more engineers. But the fact that around a quarter of the region’s workforce has no formal qualifications remains one of the most irksome and persistent economic weaknesses.
If through the work of another 500 mentors we can help more of Glasgow’s next generation to be ambitious in the shaping of their own skills then there will be more talent to go round. But for so many in business like Iain MacRitchie, helping our young is just the right thing to do.
– Stuart Patrick is chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce
For further details on Inspiring 500 go to http://inspiring500.com/
Note: The above article and associated photography is © Copyright 2014 Herald & Times Group. All rights reserved. This article was originally published on www.heraldonline.com on 2nd December 2014 and has been reprinted with permission..
