How Primary School children from Small Heath sparked a new movement for work

How Primary School children from Small Heath sparked a new movement for work

It's easy to feel powerless in the face of the challenges our communities face today. Economic and social forces can seem overwhelming, making individuals feel insignificant. However, Community Organising offers a way for people to unite and challenge this sense of powerlessness. It transforms communities by empowering them to build collective influence and effect change.

One of our favourite aspects of Community Organising is that pretty much anyone can do it. Regardless of age, the structure and curriculum remain largely the same. Birmingham Citizens, our alliance of civil society institutions, have a long tradition of engaging schools and running campaigns led by inspiring young people.

Ark Victoria Academy, a primary and secondary school in Small Heath, are perfect examples of this. With the dedicated support of their Community Engagement Lead, Mr. Ibrahim, they have been leading the way.

Identifying the issue and taking action

In the first term of the 2022/23 school year, a diverse group of primary school children joined our student leadership programme. Together, we explored how communities can win change and cultivate effective leaders. Their first task was to conduct a listening campaign, asking their peers, parents, and neighbours a simple question: "What makes you mad, sad, and glad?"

Weeks later, they came back with a huge range of stories. There were some lovely stories about music, community, faith, and togetherness – but also issues of crime, safety, homelessness, and the cost living crisis. These primary school children then had to deliberate among themselves: what is the issue that we want to work on? The discussion was rich and mature. One suggested focusing on crime, but another pointed out that unemployment could be a root cause of criminal behaviour. Ultimately, they decided to address unemployment, motivated by personal stories of family members struggling to make ends meet.

The challenge then became clear: how could a group of primary school children address unemployment in their community? Through research, they discovered that the West Midlands had around 92,000 unfilled job vacancies. They decided to create a video message aimed at employers, dressing up as professionals and appealing for a meeting to devise a solution.

Building a relationship

Within a few days of the video being published the phone company EE had been in touch. They agreed to meet with the children to negotiate. Three were chosen to be the negotiation team and lead the discussions with EE. Over half an hour they brokered a deal where EE would come to the school and provide CV support, interview skills workshops, and tours of their offices for families in the community. With the aim being to get people into jobs in EE’s Birmingham Office.

This deal was the start of building a two-way relationship between EE and the community. EE started to run the sessions, coming in regularly to run trainings and support sessions. They realised quite quickly that if you had to pick up and drop off children at school, their shift times didn’t work. EE started offering half day shifts to accommodate these needs.

Going BIG

Ark Victoria's success inspired broader efforts within Birmingham Citizens. Advice centres, schools and community charities were increasingly approached by families seeking employment support.

Taking inspiration from Ark Victoria, we are bringing together a broader campaign which learned from our colleagues in Cardiff to build a Community Jobs and Skills Compact. This compact will unite community organisations, employers, and the public sector into a coalition to address barriers to access work. Community organisations would help people navigate opportunities, employers would bring jobs (adapting them where possible), and the public sector would support by convening major organisations and adapting the adult education funding. In November 2023 Andy Street (then Mayor of the West Midlands) confirmed he would sign up to the Jobs and Skills Compact, and in April 2024 Richard Parker (Street’s then challenger in the election) committed to continue to support it should he be elected.

This work of the primary school children of Ark Victoria Academy should be a major source of inspiration to us all. They moved beyond ‘awareness raising’ into genuine action to win change. They moved a major employer into action, and they inspired and helped lead a regional campaign to get the Mayor of the West Midlands to learn from them.

Now the real work begins

As part of our founding of the Jobs and Skills Compact, we have partnered with ACH to bring together community organising and employment support in our members across the city. Dream Chasers CIC hosted our first Jobs Fair, which provided community members with jobs and training opportunities, and built relationships between local community organisations and employers. By holding this events in a trusted community venue, that can get people to turn out and provided a level of wrap around support and follow up, we believe this is a much more useful and constructive event for everyone. Several employers fed back to us that this was a much more useful event for them than the large, air-conditioned, conference hall jobs fairs can be.

We will be continuing to expand this work in the coming months, there is much more to be done to make this scale.