The end of another week here at Medtia and I am pleased to report that we have another employment success to celebrate! I have been hinting for a few weeks, but it is official….Abu has now had his contract and has been offered a permanent job as a kitchen porter at The Whitegate Pub alongside Abdul who gained a job there last year! They really are doing us proud! Well done to you, Abu – you really have proved yourself and worked so hard to achieve this paid outcome and we are all very proud of you!

There is also talk of two other jobs for our Future Finders superstars coming up in January! What a great start to 2018 that would be!

This week we held our pathways Parents’ Evening on Wednesday night. It was lovely to see so many families attending – please click here to fill in our quick questionnaire and let us know what you thought. If you didn’t manage to make it but would like to speak to your child’s teachers about their progress, please do not hesitate to get in touch to arrange an appointment. The Digit4ll boys didn’t miss an opportunity and set up a stall at Parents’ Evening which was extremely busy! Their new enterprise creating personalised phone cases has launched with a bang and is already very popular. It was also great to hear that the boys have sold nearly £500 of shares in their business! Following their success last year, many are excited by the prospect of a sound investment that will hopefully make a good return! Both of our enterprises here at Medtia (Digit4all and Pre-Internship) will be at the Christmas markets in the next fortnight to sell their goods and the first floor at Medtia has very much turned into a workshop creating fabulous products! The pre-interns have made some beautiful glass charms….I will share pictures soon so that you can get your orders in!

Our ‘Worker of the Week’ this week is Chris who is working at The Atrium 2 days a week. I had the privilege of seeing him in action on Wednesday and I was so impressed! He seems to have adopted an American accent when he is serving the customers but it only adds more charm when he says ‘Thank you for shopping at The Atrium Café, have a wonderful day’ after he has taken each order. Well done, Chris….let’s hope the First Choice Homes staff start to tip as well as the Americans do!

John and I have also met with the Horizons trustees this week to discuss developments in our provision moving forward. Much of our discussion was around post-25 provision and we are going to work over the next few months to see if this is something that we wish to offer for those young people who may need some support post 25 in being engaged within their community either socially or through volunteering/employment. As ever, I will keep you updated on our progress via this blog.

Now to news from our pathways, starting with Digit4ll..

We have seen another successful term with our Karten-funded enterprise ‘New Bridge Productions’ and ‘New Bridge Printers’. It has seen us make lots more links with local businesses and our young adults have really enjoyed getting out-and-about and earning money!

At the beginning of October our young adults decide they wanted to branch out from printing mugs, t-shirts, canvases and researched printing on mobile phone cases. After ordering some samples and test printing the students decided to launch their new product…motivational quotes on mobile phones! Their idea is to bring people together through personalised phone case printing. They also came up with a new brand name – UnITe….using IT to bring people together… I personally thought it was genius!

Anyway, we have had a huge response selling their products so far, take a look at the students as they create and sell the phone cases..

Next week we are heading off to the Manchester Christmas Markets as we have a stall ready to sell, so look out for more photos to come! Here is the flyer for their new products below – be sure to get your orders in before Christmas to avoid disappointment – there are printed phone cases for any phone model available..

Elsewhere, our video production enterprise is growing too. We already have paid filming commissions with Oldham Coliseum, New Charter Housing Company and Young Enterprise, to name a few. We are so excited about these different videos! This week our students went to New Charter Housing Company to film a web video for them – the job paid £250!!!

All the money goes into the students’ HSBC Enterprise bank account and will be distributed at the end of the academic year.

As Christmas is just around the corner, we are also going to be filming our school shows at the different sites. Our video production enterprise students are the resident videographers for the school shows now! This is our second year filming the shows thus saving the schools a considerable amount of money, helping our young adults earn some money and learning valuable skills along the way. If you would like to see the quality of recent shows please visit our Vimeo page here. You can place an order for a DVD of the Hollinwood, New Bridge and Spring Brook Primary shows here.

Activ8 have also been hard at work…

Over the past few weeks, Activ8 have really put in some hard graft in the gym, on the rugby pitch and in the classroom. Our gym work has continued to look at rugby related fitness with the lads looking at the different types of strength needed for different positions on the field and how to develop these. In between this, you may remember that both groups in Activ8 have undertaken a little charity challenge over the last few weeks in aid of Movember. Movember is a charity looking at health concerns in males, concentrating on prostate and testicular cancer and reducing male suicide rates. The lads had to complete a ‘mini-triathlon’ of 1k of running, 1k of cycling and 1k of rowing. We’re pleased to report that all of the guys completed the challenge (with a special guest appearance from our former head boy Jack Bayley) and we raised a total of £50 for the charity. Well done, guys!

The rugby sessions have continued despite the change in temperatures recently and we are looking forward to our annual ‘Activ8 Grand Fianl’ played at some point in the next few weeks. It’s a friendly game of rugby using the skills we’ve learnt in our sessions so far this year..

Finally, an update on the opening of our new post-19 college in September. I have spent much of this week looking at suitable buildings across the town and we have a few irons in the fire! As always with New Bridge, there is a bigger picture to consider as there are many developing projects across the group, so it may be that we find a new campus that meets the needs of a number of these development areas. It is such an exciting time and as soon as we confirm anything, I will let you know.

Have a wonderful weekend… I will be at The Trafford Centre all day on Sunday with my choir to sing and raise money for The Christie.

Daniel
Director of Employment & Co Head of Site at Medtia Square

You can view our previous blog entries here

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