#BreakTheBias – Mind Tools partners with Working Chance to help women with convictions restart their careers
This International Women’s Day, Mind Tools is shining a light on the crucial role learning resources can play in helping women with convictions restart their careers.
Mind Tools has been working with Working Chance, the UK’s first employment charity solely for women with convictions to help women get into work. Last year, Mind Tools employees nominated Working Chance as the company’s first charity partner. Mind Tools wanted to work with a charity or non-profit organization where their comprehensive use of learning resources not only helps people to develop their soft skills, but also to build their confidence and enable them to take control of their careers.
How can we ensure no woman is left behind?
Working Chance reports that over half of women who encounter the criminal justice system have experienced domestic abuse at the hands of their partners and 82% of women in prison were sent there for nonviolent offences. On leaving prison, women with convictions are faced with endless challenges that prevent them from rebuilding their lives. 96% of women find themselves unemployed six weeks after leaving prison, so Working Chance focuses on providing women with the skills, confidence, and self-belief they need to build their careers.
Harnessing the power of L&D to empower women with convictions to thrive
Mind Tools have been working closely with Working Chance to design and implement a toolkit that they can use to help women get back into employment. The toolkit fits into the charity’s existing employability programme, which helps women develop employability skills through areas such as CV writing, interview skills, and confidence building. The toolkit curates’ content over several topic areas into playlists, with specially selected content for women to explore. This gives them an easy starting point and the hope is that once they are using the resources, they’ll be encouraged to delve into the site and use even more.
Helen Sweet, Head of Employability at Working Chance, shares her thoughts on the partnership.
“We’re always looking for ways to develop our service to provide the best possible support for the women that we work with, and to provide them with choice in the way that they learn and develop the skills they need. Having explored a trial Mind Tools site, I could see that there was a breadth of resources that could complement the support, advice, and guidance that we give to women. And the variety of content formats would really work for those with different learning styles. I was keen to explore how we might curate a site to support the work we already do.”
How can you support Working Chance?
This International Women’s Day Working Chance are taking part in The Big Give's International Women's Day campaign. This means that for every donation the charity receives for the next 7 days, The Big Give will match! Which will DOUBLE all donations. Working Chance have a big target of £50,000 that they would like to hit, and they would love your support in helping reach this target. Find out more!
To find out more about the partnership between Mind Tools and Working Chance you can read the case study or listen to the latest Mind Tools podcast.