96Discussing social mobility with two role models: Victoria Ayodeji and Marley Ahmed; Career Ready Youth Advisory Board Members

According to a Deloitte Report from last year, “The UK has one of the poorest rates of social mobility in the developed world. This means that people born into low-income families, regardless of their talent, or their hard work, do not have the same access to opportunities as those born into more privileged circumstances”. Charities like The National Tutoring Programme, the National Access programme, the Sutton Trust, The Social Mobility Foundation, Career Ready, UpReach are working hard to support young people in difficult circumstances. However, we are unlikely to see any transformational change without political will, finances, a joined up approach between the government, private sector and charities. And of course a mindset change.A couple of weeks back I had two members of the Career Ready Youth Advisory Board on my podcast. For those who don’t know Career Ready, it is the national social mobility charity founded in 2002 to boost social mobility by empowering young people and giving their talents a platform to flourish. Career Ready now has a network of 1000 employer supporters, 3500 volunteers and have have so far reached over 200000 young people including supporting 30000 young people on its high impact Career Ready post-16 programme. Both my guests Victoria Ayodeji and Marley Ahmed are highly self motivated, are on the path to great career journeys and deeply committed to giving back. And they are involved with various initiatives which support them in this ambition. Essentially these Gen Z social mobility advocates and role models, believing in walking the talk. In this free wheeling conversation, we spoke about their early years, educational attainment, 👉🏾 Role of support networks and intermediaries like Career Ready or the Social Mobility Foundation👉🏾 The Role of mentors in learning and making career choices👉🏾 Their experience as Chair and member of the Youth Advisory Board at Career Ready👉🏾 Advocacy and what giving back means for them👉🏾 Social mobility in the UK and challenges👉🏾 Role models, the future, change and many other uplifting issues…..Depressingly a Sutton Trust research from 2022 reiterated something most of us already know - that opportunities are still determined by background. The research shockingly predicted a fall in income mobility for poorer young people due to the impact of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.  What do we ensure that young people from disadvantaged background do not fall through the cracks........Who is to be held accountable for lack of support and access to opportunities? Shownotes: Memorable passages from the podcast: Victoria: Hi everyone. My name's Victoria.Victoria: So I recently graduated from university, so I went to Cambridge and I studied geography. I am also the Chair of the Career Ready Youth Advisory Board. Beyond that as well, I'm very interested in pop culture. I'm also a DJ. I'm also very interested in storytelling. I've been public speaking for the last 10 years and I'm also very passionate about social impacts. That's probably me in a nutshell and I'm trying to be a content creator as well. So feel free to follow me on socials. Marley: That is quite an introduction. I'm Marley I'm a graduate University of Essex. I'm also a member of the Career Ready Youth Board. I...