Small Businesses have the Biggest Hearts!

A team of volunteers headed up by Nicola Moss of Moss Social and Lucy Wake of Thinking Space delivered an innovative work experience placement for no less than 12 year 10 students from Welland Park Academy, Market Harborough.

Supported by the team at Harborough District Council for the space to host at Harborough Innovation Centre along with Welcomm Communications donating 12 laptops for the students they planned to support.

Communication has been key to this whole project.

• Communicating the plan
• Communicating the offer
• Communicating the request for support

It’s a required skill in business and indeed our focus for the week at The Business Hub.

The students addressed communication via creating flyers for Thursday’s networking event.

They encouraged businesses to attend by telephoning, emailing and by walking around and knocking on office doors at the Innovation Centre (prearranged and accompanied!) to speak with different business people about their sector, their career paths and inviting them along to “Cake and Careers”.

A key part of the week was developing a website for The Business Hub, deftly guided and supported by Martin Robson of Roman Britons.

They created a plan for the networking event and communicated to each other who would be responsible for which task – delegation is a skill in itself.

They prepared for the event, did a meet and greet as their guests arrived and chatted over common ground. The students who walked in all quiet on Monday morning were professional, conversational, confident and curious. They listened and were interested in what these business people had to share and asked intelligent questions.

John from Design375 said,

“It was excellent to have an in-person visit requesting us to join in with the networking event, that takes a lot of courage and the students did themselves very proud stepping out of their comfort zone. Well done.”

They now have lots of business connections who are excited to come into school next term to deliver career talks, support mock interviews and more!

Friday saw the students round off the busy week with a presentation on diversity inclusion from Marc Rowley of HIT Leadership leading to real in-depth discussions – if you think your teenager isn’t absorbing what’s going on in the world around you, you’d probably be surprised.

Marc reflected:

“Excellent workshop that engaged the students and made them feel part of something bigger than themselves.”

Topics addressed during the week were sustainability, delivered by James Cox of Unyte Group; marketing with an insightful look at the way charities address marketing from Tim Gorman-Powell from Hope Against Cancer; a masterclass in website creation from Martin Robson who also delivered insight into AI and what it might mean for future jobs and their workplace.

Abigail Brown of Oak Wealth Planning and the Market Harborough Business Network spoke to us about the value of networking particularly for small businesses. David Scott  of Rambutan cemented the communication piece and how key it is to listen in a methodical way to capture all the data in order to make decisions and Marc supported us with understanding the value differences bring to team working. Along with team-building activities facilitated by Lucy, these students were challenged to think creatively to build a collaborative outcome.

Without a super supportive network of volunteers, this initiative could not have taken place - huge thanks yous also go to

Carmen Harrington of Inspired to Change
Linda Dominiak of Tatum Financial Services
Michaela Forty of Family Care Advice Ltd
Cameron Meany of Tax Assist Accountants Market Harborough
Rupert Turton of Action Coach Oakham, Kettering and Market Harborough
Jack Khurana of Spencer West LLP

If your local school or local authority would be interested in supporting a similar initiative and you need some support from planning, recruiting volunteers and/or delivering the experience, get in touch today.

Or perhaps you’d be interested in volunteering should a similar initiative be delivered locally to you?

Contact Nicola Moss on 07432 766001 or nicola@mosssocial.co.uk