Check our upcoming Career L.E.A.P training opportunities:

Starting October 7th 2024

About Us

Helping Young Adults Start Their Working Lives

Career LEAP is an innovative educational intervention to help at-risk young adults enter the workplace or transition to Further/Higher education, and develop the social, emotional and cognitive skills necessary for developing career identity and work-readiness.

I walk home from this and it’s just whow. I’m actually thinking, on the way home about my career and what we learned.

Matthew, 24 years old

Being prepared to work and managing a career is not straightforward for 18-25 year olds. In the current era, there is an overwhelming range of education and training choices, and fierce competition for entry-level jobs. Early school leaving followed by periods of unemployment make for little or no work experience, and a subsequent lack of the basic job-specific skills that employers advertising entry-level positions often require. Some may have grown up in stressful developmental contexts such as poverty, making it more difficult for them to develop their ‘soft skills’ such as self-regulation, self-competency, self-management, self-efficacy and pro-social self-esteem. These features can put this group at the bottom of the ladder of job applicants.

our participants

As I am an early school-leaver, I find that my gap in education stunts my options in the working world.

I have not completed a Leaving nor a Junior Certificate but I feel I have still the skills and potential to excel in a job, were I given the opportunity. I have lost confidence in myself which leads me to fail at presenting a positive image of myself to employers

Roisin, 18 years old

our work

In attempting to join the dots in tackling
barriers to employment, Career LEAP:

Evidence based learning

Uses substantial evidence from research to create a short term, intensive, person-centred work-readiness programme in the areas of (i) career competencies and (ii) workplace competencies.

A unique approach

Focuses on pedagogy (i.e. how the training is delivered to the young adults, some of whom may be disaffected with more traditional approaches to education and training), in order to provide a creative and active learning approach to maximise the impact of the training.

Effective communication

Provides specialist training and support for business speakers (recruited from local businesses and community organisations) to prepare them to engage effectively with young adults Not in Education, Employment or Training. Working alongside the programme leader, they provide authentic and credible real world experience and share examples from their own professional working lives relevant to the content and skills being explored in each module.

Mentor training

Provides specialist training and support for the businesses through certified mentor training to prepare businesses to support the young people to have a productive work-based learning placement experience.

Our upcoming trainings

New CL Cohort for participants

Starting May 27th 2024

CPD Mentor Training for business partners

Wednesday June 5th 2024

our partners

I have never seen a partnership model work so well; the partnership is extremely unique.

Having business, academia and youth services come together. All speak a different language, but Career LEAP is the common language which brings them together.