A little background might be helpful. Duncan Chamberlain has worked in both business and education, and left full time teaching last September having being an Assistant Head of a secondary school in Nottingham. He worked at King Edward’s School, Birmingham for over a decade, being a Head of Department and Housemaster, and has acted as a Principal Examiner for one of the main three examination boards, as well as owning his own business and working in a multinational, blue-chip company. His business journey, in terms of learning about skills, education and current trends in social exclusion and community cohesion have benefited from his role as a school Governor and membership of the Enterprise and Economic Development Group of the Edgbaston Constituency.

Duncan declares himself fortunate to be working with a small group of talented young people, who are recent graduates and have eschewed the traditional graduate employment path to work within the social enterprise sector. Robert Arnott and Gareth Evans in particular have established a track record in funding and delivering community based projects within the West Midlands.

Together they are developing programmes to enhance employability and life skills for young people, which are designed to bridge from disadvantage to opportunity and also introducing new ways of enhancing professional and career development within businesses. They have also developed programmes to develop skills and aspirations of employees within companies. The company has qualified for funding via the Mustard Project for high growth new businesses.

One of our social programmes for young people is The Guardians which is based in Quinton. The partnership is between Four Dwellings School, Quinzone (an Educational Action Zone) and Best Chances (a social enterprise charity housed within the Birmingham Foundation). Duncan have developed strong links with Bernie Smith, the Head Teacher at Four Dwellings, who was one of the national Head Teachers of the year in 2006 as well as other key players including the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City Council. Bridging to the Future (BTF) offers innovative, structured and bespoke programmes and consultancy with the aim of developing transferable skills, leadership, performance and confidence in a range of arenas and contexts. BTF uses a combination of fresh and creative ideas within structured solution-frameworks.

We make much use of the SLAM! programme and the development of sustainable, embedded and bespoke peer-coaching. BTF works very closely with clients to develop programmes and solutions that specifically meet client needs, and are not reliant on generic approaches. In this way, clients can be assured of individual attention and support, and on going evaluation to ensure quality is maintained. BTF weaves experience of the business, education, leadership development and change management environments to offer programmes of training, solutions, professional development, productivity improvement and organisation evolution.