The value of employment in people’s lives seems particularly obvious, and people of all kinds, from every background, should be entitled to support and guidance towards finding a job. Sometimes this process can be slow and arduous, but with the correct encouragement it can be successful, no matter how long it takes. With The Experience, a Young Workforce Development centre, and KibbleWorks, employability is one of Kibble’s core ideals. My guest on this week’s programme operates an organisation that also has employability at its heart.

MoveOn is a charity which has had a long and diverse history. Established in 1997, its mission hasn’t changed – to provide a range of services for people affected by homelessness – but in those early days it focused on providing crisis driven, reactive housing resettlement support for homeless people. A couple of years later, in response to service user feedback and following significant investment, they began to develop an employability service to help their service users obtain the skills and confidence required to help find employment.

Since then they have flourished and now offer a vast range of services that focus on helping people affected by homelessness as well as helping vulnerable young people. From those early days of reactive housing and engaging their service users in employability activities, they now offer community-based support – including peer mentoring and befriending, peer education, school based group work, and money and debt advice.

Most recently they have been operating a franchise of FareShare called FareShare Glasgow and the West of Scotland, which is a food reuse initiative aimed at tackling food poverty and health inequality. Their FareShare facilities also offer employability support in much the same way that The Experience does: by giving people work experience and helping them build their confidence in the workplace.

During this episode I speak to John Hinton, Chief Executive of MoveOn, about his role in the company, how it has changed over the years and some of the challenges and successes that they have faced. It is clear to see, even before you hear the interview, that MoveOn are a highly ambitious organisation which aim to help as many people in as many different ways that they can.

There’s a comparison to Kibble somewhere in there, I think…

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Links

MoveOn website

MoveOn on Twitter

MoveOn on Facebook

MoveOn FareShare mini site

FareShare website