TWO members of staff at a Glasgow-based recruitment agency have joined a programme to assist disadvantaged young people from the city’s East End.
Carlé Liddell and Natasha Groundwater, who work at Two Rivers Recruitment, join founder Eddie Finnigan in the MCR Pathways programme.
Recruitment consultant Liddell started at the firm in the spring of last year, and has been assigned as a mentor with the charity after completing her training. Groundwater joined as staff in September and has began her training in preparation for also becoming a mentor.
Finnigan, who founded Two Rivers in 2018, has been a mentor with the programme for the past four years.
MCR Pathways was originally set up in 2007. Starting off as a programme operating out of St Andrew’s Secondary, it has since expanded its network into schools throughout nine local authorities across Scotland.
The charity recruits, trains and matches each volunteer mentor with a young person facing the challenges of being a carer, or from otherwise disadvantaged circumstances. Its aim is to ensure all young people get the same educational outcomes, career opportunities and life chances, regardless of background.
Finnigan says these goals reverberate with the ethos at Two Rivers, which provides both permanent and temporary staffing solutions across the aerospace, engineering and business support sectors.
He said: “To be successful in recruitment, you have got to focus on building relationships, and that’s what the MCR programme is all about.
“When you look at the principles of what MCR stands for, that is what resonated with us. It fits perfectly with our wider purpose of helping people where we can.
“No one here has been pressured into joining the MCR programme – we just see it as the right thing to do. So it’s great that Carlé and Natasha have become involved.”
Mentors on the programme spend an hour a week listening to and encouraging a young person at school. The two are matched when the young person is in the third year of secondary school, with the relationship running until they complete their schooling.
The charity was founded by business entrepreneur Iain MacRitchie.
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