Council Leader supports - Make Young People Your Business Week.
Leader of The Highland Council Councillor Drew Hendry has welcomed a new Scottish Government campaign ‘Make Young People Your Business Week’ which starts today (26 August) and runs till Friday 30 August.
The campaign, which argues the many benefits in recruiting young people calls on more employers to offer unemployed young people jobs, training or high quality paid work experience.
Councillor Hendry said: “Tackling Youth Unemployment is one of the key priorities of The Highland Council’s Programme which supports the Scottish Government’s efforts to encourage and support business to employ or offer paid work experience.
“While youth unemployment in the Highlands is below the Scottish average and decreasing, there is still an unacceptable number of young people out of work and Highland Council is working hard to address this though a range of activities including modern apprentices, youth trainee scheme, graduate schemes and activity agreements.”
Two specific examples of direct support to small and medium size enterprises (SME’s) are the Council’s Employment Grant Scheme and Graduate Scheme.
The Employment Grant Scheme, supported by the European Social Fund, provides financial support to businesses as well as free specialist recruitment advice through Business Gateway to support businesses create new posts for out of work people.
To date, 140 people have been supported in to employment, 73 of these have been young people under the age of 25 years.
The Graduate Scheme provides financial support to business to recruit out of work or under-employed graduates to deliver a project of significant importance to the growth of the business.
Further information on both these projects is available at: http://www.highland.gov.uk/employgrants.htm
The Scottish Government’s Our Skillsforce website www.ourskillsforce.co.uk/recruit highlights the range of support on offer to employers.
The Highland Council supports the Scottish Government’s Make Young People Your Business Week Campaign and invites others to follow the campaign on Twitter @MYPYB