News: U-Explore powers Youth Inspiration

Rotherham education specialist, U-Explore, has joined forces with Downing Street as part of a recently announced initiative created to inspire and raise the aspirations of young people.




What's Your Destination? - www.whatsyourdestination.co.uk - is a new, independent and charity sector-led initiative that aims to make it easier to find and access the many organisations that are working to inspire young people.

The initiative has support from a variety of organisations including the Princes Trust, Facebook, Media Trust, Microsoft and Work Inspiration, and was launched last week by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister as part of the overall Youth Inspiration initiative. It is currently focused on bringing together all interested stakeholders to help shape the initiative and is set for a summer release.

The Government outlined priorities and packages to support young people into employment which includes U-Explore's work on inspiration. Publishing a paper on "Supporting Youth Employment," Prime Minister David Cameron said: "This is about more than getting our economy back on track. It's about more than improving the jobless numbers. It's about changing people's lives. Showing our young people we believe in them and backing that faith with action.

"It's time to reverse the trend of rising youth unemployment that has held back our country for far too long and help our young people get the jobs on which their future – and ours – depends."

The What's Your Destination? site has been developed and designed by U-Explore, building on its existing technology and expertise, and will now be developed from the initial beta site, which has been positioned to support the Prime Minister's announcement, to the release of the main site in late August.

Andy Pickles, CEO at U-Explore, said: "We are incredibly proud to be developing and powering "What's Your Destination?" to support the Youth Inspiration campaign. U-Explore was set up with the sole purpose to inspire and inform young people about their futures, and the campaign completely resonates with our vision and ethos.

"We are introducing local interfaces in partnership with local authorities such as Lancashire County Council to signpost students, parents and teachers to products and websites to support progression and raise aspirations, and so this was a natural extension to offer our expertise and technology to power a national interface.

"I think it's important to communicate that this is not "another" website for young people but an interface to enable them to find the sites and support that already exist; it's just a case of getting them connected.

"We look forward to launching the main site in August with partners and helping young people to find that inspiration they need to make a positive progression."

In 2009, the Templeborough company helped to create the Work Inspiration toolkit designed to help employers across the country "turn work experience into work inspiration."

U-Explore website
What's Your Destination? website

Images: U-Explore