JTL Recruits New Ambassadors

JTL adds ethnic minority ambassadors to its scheme to attract more young people to apprenticeships.

Charitable training provider, JTL, has enlisted the help of six young black and ethnic minority apprentices to encourage other school leavers to consider a career in the building services trades.

The scheme sees the young people, who are currently on an apprenticeship or already working in the building services engineering sector (as electricians and plumbers), come together to help raise awareness of the range of opportunities that exist for black and ethnic minority youths. Spread across England and Wales the new JTL Ambassadors will talk to other young people about the pleasures and pitfalls of their chosen careers.

“Our Ambassadors will be out and about in their local schools, giving other young people and soon-to-be-school leavers the opportunity to ask questions of those who have real, relevant experience of a modern-day building site.”

JTL operates a similar Ambassador scheme for young women. Such has been its success that since it was set up three years ago, the original group of 10 female Ambassadors has grown to its current 23 young women. Apprenticeship applications lifted from 2.4% of all applications in 2013 to 3.7% in 2015 with hopes of another significant increase in 2016.

The positive response to JTL’s female Ambassadors prompted the expansion of the scheme to include black and ethnic minority Ambassadors.

Equality and Diversity Manager at JTL, Yasmin Damree-Ralph says: “There’s clearly an issue to be addressed here and we’re taking some positive steps to start redressing the balance and to help all young people have the fullest range of career options available to them.

“Through our Ambassadors, we hope other young people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds can ‘hear it from the horse’s mouth’. There are too many myths and mistruths out there. Things are changing and, if school leavers opt to follow a closely supervised apprenticeship scheme that’s delivered and bought into by professional organisations, many issues are eliminated at the outset. Additionally, a company like JTL has dedicated Training Officers working in colleges and on-site, plus policies and procedures in place, should any complaints arise.

“Our Ambassadors will be out and about in their local schools, giving other young people and soon-to-be-school leavers the opportunity to ask questions of those who have real, relevant experience of a modern-day building site.”

JTL is one of the UK’s leading training providers for young people in England and Wales. The not-for-profit organisation has around 6,000 young people on apprenticeship schemes at any one time and roughly 33,000 have completed JTL apprenticeships. Almost one in two electricians in England and Wales now achieve their qualifications through JTL.