Enterprise Practitioner Review

I really enjoyed the work - I was given loads of responsibility and I learnt so much, both from the training beforehand, and whilst actually on the placement. I also really enjoy working with young people – it was great to be able to see them learn and develop under my instruction.

In my role as Enterprise Practitioner I was completely responsible for teaching young people about enterprise. I felt valued by my colleagues as they completely trusted me to teach the young people, and looked to # me to take the lead on the timetable of the day as well as trips in to the local community.

A lot of the staff that I worked with on my placement had worked on NCS during the summer already, and I felt like I had to get them to fill in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge. I would have liked to have been briefed on a few more details beforehand, e.g. the fact that I would need to bring lunch as I would be eating with the young people and wouldn’t have time to go to the shops. Overall though, I felt like I was well supported.

I was kept really busy on a daily basis. I came in and prepared the classroom and my lesson plans, and then spent the whole morning delivering sessions. In the afternoon we would visit local community partners or deliver a showcase. There was actually never a spare moment – even if things are quiet you have to be ready to run games and activities to keep all of the young people entertained.

In my role as Enterprise Practitioner I was given lots of responsibility. We were supervised by one other staff member to support us with behaviour management, but otherwise we were responsible for the whole group of young people, and their learning for three days. We had to plan and deliver the sessions, build up good working relationships with young people and staff and lead on the relationships with local community partners during visits.

The skills that I learnt weren’t directly related to my degree, but were more ‘extracurricular’, allowing me an opportunity to develop skills in youth work, public speaking, training and facilitation. I believe that all of these will be really useful in the future, both if I choose to work with young people or in business.

I wasn't actually working in an office, but in the classroom environment, and between sessions we had a great time.

You could tell that a lot of organisation had gone in to the programme, as there were lots of seasonal staff being hired. The application system was really easy to use and well organised, and we got regular communication updates. We were also called up by the manager a week in advance of starting, which was really helpful too.

For my role I had to attend two training days. It didn’t feel very personal – there were many other people at the training days, but the training was really useful, and it had clearly been specially tailored towards our roles. I feel like they did invest a lot beforehand – the only thing that is missing is feedback of my performance during the placement.

There seemed to be lots of people who I’d met who had worked on the NCS programme before. I think that working this summer has opened up doors to doing even more shifts this summer, as well as in Autumn of this year. I also believe that it will be easier for me to get work with NCS The Challenge again next summer too.

There was a really strong social scene amongst my fellow colleagues – we caught up every morning and evening, and I really enjoyed these moments. They all came from very interesting backgrounds, and all seemed motivated by making a difference for young people. Everyone was really friendly and easy to talk to and I’ll definitely be keeping in touch.

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