Gerraint’s blog December 2020

Happy New Year! As you can imagine, with the Christmas break, December was a quieter month.  However, at the beginning of the month Elite Supported Employment Agency asked me to offer their staff and team a ‘taster’ session of my online Fun Hour that I run on a weekly basis. They all seemed to really enjoy the taster session and a number of young people from Elite turned up to the weekly Fun Hour sessions as a result. This is a great way of engaging with young people and helping to get them interested in the Engage to Change Project, as well as offering a chance to socialise and have fun during lockdown.

On the 4 December I co-chaired the Autism Wales’ Employment Symposium webinar with Professor Phil Reed from Swansea University. This webinar offered various workshops related to supporting organisations to employ people with autism and/or learning disabilities, with case studies and discussions of best practice in employment.

On the 10 December I caught up with the project Ambassadors before the Christmas break. Jonathan was planning to take part in an event with Engage to Change in December, regarding his own experiences of employment and training – I hope to be able to tell you more about that next month.

All Wales People First held their Christmas event on 16 December and I was asked to do my Hootenanny! This Christmas event was preceded by the ‘Through our Eyes’ Photography Project workshop that is gathering photographic and video stories from members.  It was a great day.

As a way of encouraging more young women to join the Engage to Change project, we’re holding a ‘Women in Work’ event on 21 January. I’ll feedback on this event in my next blog.