ARAMARK HAS become the first Recruitment Partner of City Year UK, a youth and education charity which aims to support more young people to gain employability skills through a full-time year of volunteering. In doing so, Aramark will extend its long-standing partnership with City Year UK for a further two years.
By becoming a Recruitment Partner, Aramark, through funding and pro bono support, will help City Year UK realise its ambition of achieving a six-fold increase in the number of its ‘corps members’. By 2020, the charity’s vision is to grow from 150 to 1,000 corps members a year, based in five cities, reaching 70,000 children.
Corps members are 18-25 year-old volunteers who serve as role models, mentors and tutors in inner-city schools across London and Birmingham, currently helping to raise the educational attainment of 10,000 pupils. Through volunteering, they also gain the opportunity to develop personally and professionally, and make a successful transition into further education or employment after their ‘City Year’.
Aramark has been a City Year National Leadership Partner in the United States for over seven years, and has supported City Year UK since its launch in 2010.
Andrew Main, Aramark’s UK Chief Executive, said: “Aramark’s involvement with City Year forms part of realising our company mission to deliver experiences that enrich and nourish lives. We have seen the fantastic, tangible benefits the charity brings to its young volunteers and the inner-city schools and wider communities it supports.
“One of the focuses of our corporate responsibility programme is the continuing challenge of unemployment and helping people find fulfilling work. We believe we can make the biggest impact on this by partnering with City Year UK.”
Aramark has previously sponsored a City Year UK community engagement team in London and its employees have given guidance to corps members through initiatives such as career exploration days. This new partnership will give more Aramark employees the opportunity to get involved with mentoring corps members, running skills workshops and supporting recruitment events. The company will also support City Year UK’s annual fundraising dinner and graduation ceremony.
Sophie Livingstone, City Year UK Chief Executive, said: “I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Aramark for signing up as City Year UK’s first recruitment partner. City Year UK’s unique model is only made possible by the very real corporate partnerships we’re able to form with companies like Aramark. Our leadership development programme, which gives our young volunteers first-hand experience of the workplace, a range of career options and access to new networks, wouldn’t be possible without them.
“We have set ourselves an ambitious target to recruit 1,000 young people by 2020, with the aim of not only transforming the lives of the children they’ll inspire and support to succeed at school, but their own future job prospects.”
