The Building Bridges project has now come to an end but was a project delivered by St Francis Employability in partnership with Coventry City Council, CRMC and Positive Youth. The project was about supporting newly arrived migrants to Coventry to integrate, gain skills and imbed in the community.
The role of St Francis Employability was to deliver accredited skills based learning for people who did not have English as a first language AND to manage volunteer placements for them to help improve English, confidence and employability. We would take between 15 and 20 people, 4 times a year and many have gained employment since the end of the course - all received a certificate and invaluable experience.
As the Building project draws to a close, it is clear the project had a huge impact in Coventry, and made a big difference to many. St Francis saw an over-achievement in all of the outputs which it delivered. 12,145 hours of volunteering were recorded against a target of 10,000 and this over-attainment would likely have been significantly greater had several months not been lost to COVID-19 pandemic. Against the target of 480 hours of teaching being delivered, St Francis Employability delivered 540 hours of teaching. In terms of total hours of learning, this adds up to 7,680 hours of learner contact across all participants. Additionally, to these figures St Francis Employability got 26 people into paid employment.
