Companies are often asked what is their ‘mission’ statement? And for companies like us this is usually followed by ’so you can make lots of money?’.

We work with lots of different people in the Scottish communities who need our help with employability because this is our prime objective. The welfare and continued employment for our expert staff is our second priority and thirdly we need to make a financial surplus or we cannot have the security we need to continue the work.

What are the results of this approach?

This year we will work with over 2000 people in Scotland who need our services and we will secure jobs for almost 500 of these people. EEC will work with a variety of partners and funders to achieve this - and these are partners who believe as we do that we can make a difference by supporting those who need the greatest help in securing employment.

Our staff are highly valued and will be rewarded for these huge efforts with whatever them inform us is important and valuable to them. So over the past years they have asked for increased salaries, more generous expenses, promotion, greater range of duties, extended holidays and development programmes. We have responded with average pay increases over the past 4 years of 7% per annum; expenses increased by 25% and opportunities for many into promoted posts. Our Investors in People audit last week found that we were working along the lines of the above principles and that we had firmly established the framework for continuing to do so as a company.

And surplus? We like many other companies are experiencing the hard effects of the Economic Recession and have had to fight to keep ourselves afloat — we will continue to do so. Because like all at EEC we believe that what we are doing is important and does make a difference. We want to make a contribution to the communities we live and work in.

We will contribute a large sum of money to the Exchequer every year and we will always strive to build a greater service for the communities we work in –our Mission is to achieve the eradication of Poverty of Ambition and Expectation for those we work with in our communities

A little more about what we do to tackle the poverty of ambition and expectation is on our web site –and I hope that this week to have a short film describing what we do on this site
www.employmententerprise.co.uk

We deliver programmes for a wide range of people in central Scotland who have many barriers to finding work - personal, location, skills, communications, alcohol/drugs misuse, disability, homelessness, health and so on. All are able to progress to far better futures if we can spend a short time with them to enable them to do what they want to do. We achieve the outcomes required for our funders and we also achieve the personal development outcomes for individuals who participate.

I believe that there are 3 major pillars in the construction of a society which can set its aims to eradicate the poverty of ambition and expectation — Employment, Enterprise and Education

Our education system is designed to take students through a ’sausage machine’ and come out the other side able to proceed on their journey through life with qualifications. This does not happen very often though, with all the personal aspirations for their lives which students wanted at the start –consider that still more than 50% of our graduates go on to work in an area in which they did not study!! How many Modern Apprentices achieve the Vocational Qualification - fewer than 40% in the construction industry. Around 16% of school leavers in Scotland go on to nothing –and this figure is rising daily.

I have said that the path which we could follow begins with establishing what an individual ‘wants’ to do –to consider this carefully and to build ambition and expectation. Then encourage self enterprise, community enterprise, social enterprise and business enterprise in our society in order to enhance the ambition and expectation.

Education is then only a tool to provide the necessary skills to achieve the goals.
Many people in our society including politicians do not fully grasp the situation facing us, that perhaps as many as 25% of the working population are ‘workless’ in those communities which are described as ‘deprived areas’
When the overall Unemployment figures say that it is 6% of the country who are affected by unemployment, the politicians, media and public assume that because 94% are working then everything is ok — it is the human trait of  ’I'm all right Jack’ which causes this response and so the problems faced by 250,000 people in Scotland for example and their families, is a subject not to be worried about for long
If I am wrong then where then are the programmes designed to help this situation? Is funding being increased to meet this problem where the official unemployment figures for the UK are predicted to rise over 3 million?
The answer is no.
Our company will endeavour to raise funding from all sources possible to facilitate the return to work for so many of the communities we are able to assist.
There must be recognition of the facts that millions of our populations will be forced to live in poverty, debt, isolation and hopelessness for many years to come –many do already.
There are many other priorities in our society today, I accept.
But is there any more important than the welfare and future of our own people?

I know that this may not apply to all Colleges in Scotland but I would be surprised if this opinion did not cover 90% of them –they will all be empty for the next 6 -8 weeks. Why???

I worked in Colleges over the past 20 years and it was always thus –the staff go off for the summer and these enormous community assets close down. In fact College usage for the year barely gets over 40% of the time available I remember being told –evenings, weekends, public holidays, summer time etc are times when most are closed

Isn’t it time that the Scottish Government came up with another funding mechanism for Further Education? What if Colleges had to achieve employment target destinations for their students?

75% of our students still are out of work after 1 year

50% of our graduates still find work, eventually, in a vocational area OTHER than they were qualified in –and this is the figure I remember being quoted 20 years ago!!