National Skills Week: Determination

I’m James and I’m a Programme Coordinator at Envision, responsible for delivering our Programme at Secondary level in 5 schools across the Bristol region.  

Today is the fourth day of National Skills Week, and I wanted to recognise another of Envision’s essential skills – determination! This skill is often overlooked, but it is key to success in both educational and workplace environments. After all, what is teamwork without resilience? Where does the ability to solve problems get us without the will to solve problems? How can we show the world what we’re capable of unless we’re able to overcome what it throws at us?

As outlined in our previous blog, at Envision we are partnered with Skills Builder, whose universal framework recognises aiming high and staying positive as essential skills. We combined these two concepts into one: determination. This skill is important as it is an attribute that employers always look for so, in any interview, there is always a question that relates to overcoming a challenge or persevering through difficult circumstances.

One reflection activity we facilitiate through our curriculum is “Comfort Zones”, where our young people consider how comfortable they are when presenting in front of an audience. This allows their mentor teams to support them with tips and advice on how to approach and push through this discomfort, using their own experiences from their lives and careers.

This reflection is a really useful exercise as it equips the young people with real techniques that they can apply later down the line if they are feeling nervous when presenting at our final events, and also gives them the confidence to persevere in the face of challenges.

Our programme supports young people to design, develop, and deliver a social action project. As anyone who has ever taken on a project will know all too well, they never go smoothly from start to finish, and that’s okay! At Envision, we believe in providing space to fail. At difficult parts of the journey, our role is to support young people to show the determination needed to get back on track.

These ideas are reflected in the judging criteria at our final events. When young people present their projects at the end of the programme, we’re not expecting them to tell us how it all went swimmingly, but how well they responded when it didn’t!