Throughout May young people from across our Street Elite programme cohorts experience an influx of targeted workshops and employability coaching to help them into work opportunities. This Tuesday, every cohort from the programme was invited the TeamSport kart racing track in Mitcham for an employability day orientated around the ever-growing sport of indoor kart racing.
TeamSport are the UK’s Number 1 indoor racing organisation. It’s common for F1 drivers such as Lewis Hamilton to start off their careers on the indoor track. Ironically, the Mitcham venue regularly hosts Lewis’s brother Nicolas Hamilton on pro-karting days.
After being kitted out with full protective suits, helmets and gloves our young people were ushered into a room for a safety briefing. They were then welcomed by the Site Manager Dani who gave the young people an empowering speech around potential, challenges and self-development. Dani shared: “TeamSport is such an incredible place to work and I hope that after today some of the young people will feel confident to come back for work experience.”
Dani also made sure to tell the young people about three of her employees; Josh, Rahim and Charlie. All three of them started working as Marshall’s at TeamSport, and have since become fully registered Marshalls . They now run karting sessions for young cadets which include young children living with disabilities such as Autism.
Josh, Rahim and Charlie were marshalling the event and it was a great opportunity for our young people to envisage how they could step into the role themselves. Victoria is from one of our female cohorts. She shared: “Today was a great experience and it’s been interesting to hear about all of the different work opportunities they have in London.”
Although they’re a national organisation, TeamSport have six venues across London that host over 350 drivers on average everyday. Generously, the venue was exclusively booked for our charity allowing our young people to get the TeamSport teams full attention. Lolly is the Dual Site Manager for Crawley and Mitcham. Throughout the day she was busy making sure the young people were racing safely whilst having the most fun as possible. When asked about the day she shared: “We have five values that we live by here my favourite is #FUELLEDBYFUN.”
She added: “It’s the best environment to support young people in as they come through, develop and improve themselves.”
After the initial safety briefing the young people experienced a full day of kart racing which allowed all of the young people from the various cohorts to socialise and expand their social networks. Ash is another young person from our Street Elite programme. He shared: “Having days out gives me a break from my normal routine and changes my environment so it helps me with my social skills and confidence.”
For many of the young people the opportunity to socialise was the highlight of the day. Jessica is another young person from the Street Elite programme. She shared: “My favourite thing about today was meeting new people from other parts (cohorts) of the Street Elite programme, I look forward to doing more events like this in the future.”
We thank all of the TeamSport Mitcham team for all of their support in making this day a huge success.
