VIY supports first Construction Skills Shortage Week

Here’s how we’re already acting on a number of recommendations made within the On The Tools Skills Shortage White Paper – and how you could get involved and do #SomethingConstructive together with us to help reduce the shortage.

Working with young people and their current educators

• Taking young people from zero to ‘the first rung on the ladder’ through practical, accessible and inclusive hands-on skills training experiences, the chance to gain Entry Level City & Guilds accreditations and boost their apprenticeship/work-readiness – in a way that’s not happening in schools and colleges

• Inspiring young people to consider construction as a relevant and rewarding career pathway – specifically more diverse audiences that are currently underrepresented in the sector including women, young people who are neurodiverse, have a disability or from ethnic minority backgrounds

• By seeing first-hand the positive impact of the VIY experience on site, educators, youth workers, support workers, parents and other adult influences are gaining an insight into the industry to reinforce it as a positive pathway for the young learners they support

Get young people involved here

Working with tradespeople 

• Mobilising tradespeople and construction workers as positive role models and inspirational Trade Mentors for young people on our projects by sharing their skills and own lived experience of a career in the trade

• Improving their own sense of wellbeing by mentoring young people and making an impact in their community on projects of real social value

Volunteer or become a Mentor here

Working with employers

• Working in partnership with a wide range of cross-sector partners, including many big players from the trade and construction, like Dulux, Toolstation and Travis Perkins, and housebuilders like Keepmoat Homes and Persimmon Homes to make our projects happen through materials donations, volunteer mentors, project funding and progression pathways for young people within their company or with their customers

• Directly connecting construction employers and professional tradespeople on VIY projects with brilliant young people who have demonstrated appetite and aptitude (through VIY) and are looking for a next step opportunity into the industry, just like Ali, now an apprentice with contractor Ian Williams, through our partnership with Dulux

• Increasingly, we’re looking to bring employers/construction firms, tradespeople and young people together to share both valuable new retrofit and green skills, as well maintaining more traditional heritage skills including carpentry, by working on community facility retrofit projects and heritage buildings

Talk to us about working in partnership

VIY develops new hub in North East

We’re expanding our work across to the North East, thanks to part-funding from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, on new programmes with South Tyneside and Gateshead Councils respectively, to positively impact local young people and community spaces.

In South Tyneside, we’re embarking on four projects in the local area, with our first project at Harton Westoe Miners Club/South Shields Football Club completed in March. See what we did here. Next, we’ll be helping Boldon Colliery FC to become more welcoming for their growing female football and cricket teams by creating more inclusive changing spaces.

In Gateshead, we’ll be helping to renovate three local community spaces, including the Gateshead Redheugh 1957 Community Football Club, Team Life Centre and Bensham Grove Community Centre.

Know of young people 16+ who would benefit from the VIY experience in this region?

Projects will be match-funded by other VIY partners such as Sport England and Barclays Community Football Fund, and supported with materials donated by our Trade Partners including Dulux.

Are you a local tradesperson interested in helping out?

About the UK Shared Prosperity Fund

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK government’s Levelling Up agenda and provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus