Our impact is growing!
We are incredibly proud of the impact that we have had on all of those we have worked with and are pleased to share our 2022 / 23 Impact Report.
We have now delivered 47,000 hours of opportunities since we launched in 2017. We’ve helped more than 1,500 young people and have now been commissioned by or partnered with over 80 companies to delivered high quality work experience projects across all 4 of our project offers:
- Youth Research and Engagement
- Youth Voice
- Creative and
- TV + Film
‘We Rise delivered a fantastic project and covered all angles which I feel like the young people were at the heart of at every stage. Communication was excellent and feedback was always taken on.’ – Chinnelle McLean, Lambeth Council Elevate: Careers.
We are driven by our values:
- We empower
- We coach
- We collaborate and
- We Rise
Which continues to help us deliver our mission to empower young people to create successful futures. We do this by turning our Client’s need to engage with young people from diverse backgrounds into high quality and valuable work experience opportunities that provide underprivileged young people career insights, inspiration and work ready skills that they can’t easily access elsewhere.
We are incredibly proud that the quality of what we deliver has continued to grow alongside our experience and that 99% of the young people who have taken part in one of our projects would recommend us:
‘I acquired business and consumer awareness skills and I learnt that I can complete any task if I just set my mind to it. I learnt that I need to be more confident and put myself out there and don’t say no to any opportunities.’ – We Rise Alumni.
Youth Research and Engagement Experts
We were delighted to run research projects for some inspiring clients like The Felix Project and Pearson Edexcel. We built on our expertise at youth survey work by including focus groups for both projects which boosted the confidence of the young people taking part and gave our Clients even more valuable qualitative insight.
It was exciting to be commissioned by international developers Bouygues to design and run an engagement workshop to hear young people’s ideas for how the Somerleyton Passage could be improved. The project was hugely over subscribed which is testament to the fact that young people want more of the kind of opportunities that we give them – there is a huge demand for career insight, inspiration, real work experience, work ready skills and contact with professionals. It’s why we exist! It’s always so rewarding to be able to combine giving Clients social and business impact with the type of high quality work experience that disadvantaged young people need.
Partners and Collaborators
Partnering and collaborating is part of our DNA at We Rise and we are incredibly grateful to the long term support that we have from global survey experts Ipsos who’s ‘Reach’ volunteers brought their expertise again to ensure our 2022 / 23 research projects delivered high value. It was also incredibly rewarding to work in partnership to deliver several of our other projects including with evaluation expert Linda Jackson of The Loom on The Felix Project focus groups and with Architects Carver Haggard + Tisserin Engineers on the London Festival of Architecture youth voice / creative project: Young People at the Centre of Brixton, for which we were shortlisted. What a brilliant achievement for the young cohort that took part!
It’s an understatement to say that we are always happy working with the ITV Win team on creative film /TV advert projects and the 2023 ITV Gok project was no exception. Our third collaboration provided the young people with an extremely professional and comprehensive level of experience. They gained a thorough insight into the TV industry, a wealth of knowledge from the ITV experts who they work with including presenter Gok Wan and have a unique piece of work to showcase their skills. We commend ITV Win for their commitment to driving diversity.
We put global advertising agents Leo Burnett in the same category as they have been working with us across several years now on a driving diversity campaign which culminated in the production of a film, ‘Authentic’ written by a group of black and mixed ethnicity young people to appeal directly to young people like themselves at school and encourage them to consider careers in the advertising industry.
Our biggest project delivery yet!
In the autumn of 2023 we delivered our biggest project yet. Working in partnership with the incredible Fashion Minority Alliance on behalf of Lambeth Council’s ELEVATE! Programme, we ran 2 intensive Bootacmps for 40 young people. They had a fashion related creative brief to deliver across the week as well as a full timetable of expert workshops covering; personal branding, social media promotion, CV and Linkedin writing, as well as hearing from a curated roster of industry experts including stylists, photographers, marketing and PR managers. We also included a trip to Make Town where they learnt to weave and sew their garments. The impact on the cohorts was incredible.
We have also grown the number of schools our Alumni come from to 14. The support of the many school 6th form and careers leads who always share our opportunities with their students is brilliant – it’s thanks to them that we are reaching the young people who benefit the most from our opportunities.
What an amazing 18 months we have had and we can’t wait to see what the next ones bring.
‘I would recommend We Rise delivered a fantastic project and covered all angles which I feel like the young people were at the heart of every stage. Communication was excellent and feedback was always taken on.’ Client feedback.
If you would like to get involved in any way or sponsor one of our future bootcamps or workshops then please contact our COO, Polly Waterworth: polly@werise.org.uk