Rio Ferdinand Foundation create opportunities for young people to tackle inequality, achieve their personal potential and drive social change. The Foundation provides support under four strategic themes Safe spaces; Health and Wellbeing; Strong, Safe, and Inclusive Communities; and Progression, Skills and Employability.
X is a young person we came across due him currently being out of employment, education, and training. Due to issues within the family, they are staying at his aunties house and has only been in the area for around 6 months. He suffers from epilepsy and has fed back to staff that it has had a detrimental effect on his employment opportunities. X can be naturally quite reserved and harder to engage so it was important to engage him though his interests.
The individual spoke to us about his love of cooking and his previous employment was in a kitchen so naturally we wanted to explore this further with him. They told us that he would love to work in a kitchen again and has career ideas around being a chef. Getting X into a brand-new space to cook for people he had never met before was initially a challenge but giving them the control over what he would be cooking really sparked his imagination and staff / other young people on the programme would score his food.
Due to X's medical conditions and lack of opportunities, he’s never had a chance to lead something creative. Alongside cooking, they started to get involved in photography and filmmaking - looking at how we would market his food at a top end restaurant, photographing food, naming the dish, doing the write up and agreeing a price. X
X is now a lot more confident in the setting and has become a pro-active member of the group. He always attends and is usually last to leave. He challenges staff around facts and is very inquisitive by nature. We are keen to continue tapping into X's other interests around art and music. We are also keen to explore support around epilepsy in the workplace moving forward. X has been fantastic on the programme so far and we look forward to seeing him develop further as we move forward. He has really enjoyed this process and learning how cooking may translate into business and career skills.