Amy Parkes

Amy Parkes,Business Volunteer

Volunteering at Webster Primary School in Moss Side was one of the most challenging but exciting things I’ve done for a very long time. I was part of a team of trainee solicitors who descended on the school to work alongside teachers to deliver the Young Enterprise Primary Programme. Our challenge: to throw open a window on the world of work to 4-11 year olds.

I feel passionately that it’s crucial that we teach children about what’s going on around them and equip them with the understanding and skills to deal with this. Through volunteering at Webster Primary, I hope that we have helped these 200 children by giving them a better understanding of the world, a new perspective on their environment and a desire for success. All of these things, I think, will help the them to cope with and understand today’s difficult economic environment.   

By opening the eyes of primary school children to the world around them, we won’t just equip them for working life, but we’ll give them a greater understanding of the world that they are part of.  As they progress through the programme children build on these ideas to widen their knowledge and think about business in a national and even global context. Hopefully, if these children start to develop their commercial awareness at a young age, they will grow up to be more aware of the wider social and business environment that they are part of.

I would like to think that we were able to offer the children at Webster Primary the confidence to know that they can succeed in the world. As living, breathing examples of success, volunteers from business that go into schools can be inspirational role-models, even to very young children.  In today’s challenging world I don’t think anything can be more important than inspiring the younger generation with passion and confidence to succeed.