Introducing Jo Parsons, the Senior Head of Programmes & Delivery at Prince’s Trust International, as the fourth Q+A in our Spotlight series!
Can you give us a little overview about Princes Trust International (PTI) and how it came to be?
Absolutely! PTI was born out of Princes Trust UK (PTUK), which has been going for 43 years now. The UK entity was receiving lots of inbound enquiries, from governments from the commonwealth noticing our work and essentially asking: “You’re doing this great work supporting young people in the UK – can you come and do that for us internationally?” After a while we felt we absolutely had to give it a go, so we initially launched on a very small scale.
Our first programme – an education programme called Achieve – was launched in Malta in 2015, Malta had one of the highest drop-out rates for young people in secondary school and wanted to find a way to develop a more holistic approach to learning to keep children in school, hence the development of the Achieve programme – we’re operational in 13 countries now. We don’t deliver these programmes ourselves, our delivery partners do: for example, in Malta, their Ministry of Education run the Achieve programme (based on PTUK’s Achieve programme) in every school and education institute in the country now.
We don’t just run purely academic programmes – we deliver enterprise training and employment training, and we really believe in the motto “Live, Learn and Earn”. Through this ethos we aim to be supporting young people in their local economies too. We work with a very diverse group of young people including specifically with a lot of young girls, particularly in areas such as Asia where there are a lot of disparities in opportunities for men and women. We’re pleased to say that on average, we work with more females in India than we do with boys, for example. We also work with young people who may have involved in gangs and gang culture, and more broadly with people from the ages of 11 up to 30. The needs vary from country to country, so we specialise in adapting our programmes to young people from different circumstances.
So – whilst we were originally conceived from PTUK, as a now independent charity we have truly embraced being an INGO and make sure to adapt our strategy to each country in order to maximise the impact we have!
Amazing that you were approached, that’s a real testament to the great work that PTUK was doing. You mention holistic learning – with one of the key themes of the PTI’s work being “social/ emotional and personal learning”. Can you tell us a bit more about why that’s so important?
Oh, several reasons! One of those is getting people ready for the world after school and university. We’ve had plenty of employer feedback on this subject – even if employers have highly educated people coming to work for them, if those individuals haven’t worked before they can lack those employability skills and social/emotional learning skills such as how to deal with conflict, managing behaviours and understanding how to work with others.
Social/emotional learning and development allows young people to be more confident in their learning, and explore learning methods that work for them. I think we all know that we respond differently to different things – some people work well with tests, others with coursework, some people are very doing-focussed, and certainly from an international perspective we want to take that learning to other countries. We want to be saying very clearly that different isn’t wrong, and adapt how we support young people in learning to help them get the best outcomes.
For me, particularly in a post-Covid world, the most important ones will be teamwork and communication skills, as well as confidence – how you get things done and how you approach other people in working in partnerships is so important.
You mentioned as well that you support people up to the age of 30. Some people might expect that individuals should be established by 30 – what’s the reasoning behind keeping support in place until that age?
It’s interesting that you say that, because in some places around the world, such as Africa, young people are considered to be so up until the age of about 40 (which my mum would be very happy about!). I think it’s about understanding that learning is a journey that doesn’t just stop when you’re eighteen, that some people miss out on skill-building that is supposed to happen in school and it’s okay for that learning – whether academic, social, emotional, or employer-specific – to come later.
There are numerous reasons why people don’t complete school or achieve the GCSEs that they may need for certain jobs when they come out of school. It’s an easy spiral for people to get into where they might not work for long periods of time, completely lose confidence or self-belief which, in turn, can exacerbate further periods of being out of the system. So, at that point, do you just forget about those people? Or do you say, “no – these people have great potential and it’s up to us to support them and take those next steps”?
As a youth charity we do have to have a cut off, but having it at 30 allows us to have a wider impact than we could if it was 18 or 21 – and we know that there are many other organisations out there that provide support for adults which is useful in terms of transition for the individuals who are no longer eligible for our support.
As an international organisation, how has the pandemic affected the work you’re doing and the programmes you’re running? And how has it impacted the job prospects of the young people you support?
It has had a huge impact on the economies in many of the countries that we work in; particularly those with tourism-based economies which have been hit hard, such as in the Caribbean.
Regarding youth job prospects, some of the countries I’m working in such as Nigeria, who we’ll be working with this year, does not have enough jobs to accommodate its large youth population, which is continuing to grow. So in these kinds of places, that’s where things like upskilling and helping people create and then grow their own businesses – so they can create jobs to help other people too – will be so vital.
Other than Covid, we have seen further impact from events such as the volcano in St Vincent and the Grenadines which meant that after there had been a further shutdown because of covid, there was another stay-at-home order because of the resulting ash cloud…so different countries are very much facing different realities.
Everybody is going to experience a reduction in jobs and opportunities. However, we see that as an opportunity to inspire young people to take a hold of their own future, think in a different way, and create some change from that. This is certainly one of those ‘we’re all in this together’ situations.
We don’t want it to be all doom and gloom – so what’s looking good for you? What are you most excited about coming up in PTI’s future?
Well, reflecting on the year we’ve had, we were able to pivot international delivery to virtual delivery. 79% of all our delivery last year was virtual and we were actually able to support 94% more young people this year than we did the year before. So, despite Covid we’ve helped more young people than we ever have before.
I think we’re on a trajectory now where next year we’ll want to do the same; we’ll want to increase our depth and our offering to young people. We’ll also be working in new countries, such as Nigeria and the Eastern Caribbean and growing our programmatic activity.
Regarding our educational programmes – particularly the Achieve programme – we will be looking at really supporting those schools now that kids are going back.
After the success of our digital intervention, we’ll also be looking to identify where there are opportunities for us to offer a blend of digital and face-to-face delivery to young people, because the feedback has suggested a combined version of that approach could be really well received.
So, I think growth and a further deepening of the work we do with our partners are something that we’re really excited about.