Giving a taste of the workplace 

One of the main challenges for schools and parents is how to give their children work experience. Long are gone the days where children could pick up odd jobs in holiday time or even at weekends or before or after school. I personally started work on farms at the age of 12, and worked for them, or the Post Office, or building sites all through school and university holidays.

It doesn't happen any more because of insurance and because of the law. Companies are now not allowed by law to let people work on their premises without correct legal and insurance clearance. It's not to say that suddenly we have a lot of work situations which are too dangerous, or unsuited for, children. It's just that the world of work has become so regulated, and the punishments so severe, that companies cannot choose to use school children for work. The only things that are authorised are short periods of work experience, say, one week, which are frequently unpaid. They are not designed to be a real job, just to give a young person an idea of how having a job works.

My children have experienced such short jobs, but they cannot compare with the type of holiday job I had when I was 12 - getting up at 6, making my own packed lunch, waiting at the bus stop, starting work at 7 30, then clearing out pig pens, and castrating piglets all morning. At the end of the week a pay packet would be given to me, and I would have to give some of this to my mother for house-keeping. Not only was I doing a real job, but I also was earning money and spending most of it on necessities. There was no question of spending the money on partying, beer, or cigarettes. The hard-earned money was too valuable for that.

Need the money

So part of the problem is one of money. If a parent cannot by law find holiday jobs for their children, how can they educate their children in the ways of money? Most children I see receive pocket money for no particular "work" of any kind, other than getting satisfactory marks at school, which I don't believe should come into the money equation at all. The children then spend this easy money on shopping, on eating at MacDonalds, and soon enough on cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. This is of course no way to be educating a child about money, yet modern parents frequently do it this way.

An organisation like Challenge Europe cannot influence the way parents allocate and monitor pocket money. But through our courses we have by chance discovered an opportunity to create work experience, that we can offer expenses money for. As a charitable organisation working for children we have the normal insurances for looking after children on various sites. That means that any educational situation is effectively covered.

Nearly all of our courses have either financial sponsors, or sponsors who supply equipment or facilities. Further, the children of sponsors find themselves on courses, so the sponsors, often business people, are willing to use the courses as a marketing vehicle for their companies. Frequently it involves educating the children on how their own businesses are run. Challenge Europe has encouraged this, even though the courses by design haven't been set up to involve such an activity. It has happened quite naturally, and has become the most durable, and repetitive feature of everything that we offer.

So why has this become such a central feature of Challenge Europe courses?

Using your hands

When you take on children for a day, or sometimes several days on end, you need to occupy them. You'll be offering them a programme of sport or languages, and there'll be the usual breaks for meals, and frequently accommodation too, involving transfers and shopping trips. At certain moments, depending on where you are, and how much time you've got, you start to squeeze in spontaneous visits, or activities. As soon as you know that you are going to be going past a certain place at a certain time, you then try and take advantage of this to give something else to do to the children.

Just as a simple example, in our self-catering accommodation, the supervisors would usually do the cooking, and the easiest thing is to encourage the assistance of the children in preparing meals. Quickly the children learn how to cook.

Healthy eating

At one site we had some renovation work going on whilst a course was taking place. We the created an afternoon where the children created a  work party being involved in gardening and landscaping, painting and cleaning. At almost no time have we ever had any difficulty in persuading the children to participate. They have found these jobs fun and educational, and socialising.

While doing some technical renovation work, in particular installing solar panels on one of our properties, the engineers offered to show the children what they were doing whilst the installation was taking place. And, quite normally, they had no hesitation in enlisitng their help, "pass me the No. 14 spanner, " cut that piece of timber along that line". Once again, all of the children love being involved in something that is a form of education and living so different from their lessons at school.

Within a short time we decided to offer these moments as official work experience, in particular when we knew when we could rely on certain technicians being involved in our courses on a regular basis.

The sports and schooling courses are the main front line activities of Challenge Europe. These are the things that the parents and children can recognise. But we add on work experience as a fixed activity, and that is our big plus. Some of our sponsors have been ready to pay the children for hourly or daily work on an expenses basis, if they prove their enthusiasm and competence. The children love earning this "pocket money", and learn quickly the value of money, the relationship between a sum of money, and time spent in a workplace.

Best of all, this work experience is always fun. The children do practical and technical things, for activities that they would never do at school, and at that age they learn so quickly.