RAO UESR
** Contribution to be determined **
SCOTTISHPOWER
ScottishPower has a strong corporate commitment to lifelong learning, embodied in its dedicated learning business, ScottishPower Learning, which offers a wide range of learning and development opportunities for our employees, their families and disadvantaged people in the wider community. This approach has helped more than 10,000 young people by providing them with opportunities to increase their employability, gain employment and/or return to higher education.
Community Learning Programmes
In its community support activities, ScottishPower Learning focuses on disadvantaged people: encouraging and helping those who are disengaged from learning, improving the employability of the unemployed, improving the employability and career prospects of school pupils and supporting learning in the community that meets local and broader economic regeneration.
Some programmes focus on young people in deprived areas who have become alienated from traditional learning, using technology, drama, art, music, environmental, community and outdoor activities for the productive engagement of young people. These programmes include ArtsWork, RSNO School Proms and The Prince’s Trust Team, which gives young people the opportunity to develop confidence, motivation and personal skills through working in small teams. This year ScottishPower supported 16 teams with 194 participants, led by ScottishPower staff seconded for a year.
The company also supports young people through programmes aimed at those who have little or no formal qualifications and who come from socially and/or economically deprived areas. They help to build ‘soft’ skills, such as communication and reached more than 850 young people last year. Programmes are run in Merseyside and Glasgow and include three specific modules: School to Work, Young Managers and SkillSeekers, which achieved the milestone of serving its 10,000th learner in 2004. The programme earned Business in the Community’s Example of Excellence in 2004 and 2005 and has had meaningful and measurable success, with more than 70% of Skillseekers entering employment or further education.
ScottishPower’s US operations have incorporated strong learning themes as well, including the transition of the PacifiCorp Foundation to support learning initiatives in communities served by the company. In 2002 the Foundation launched a $1 million, three-year commitment to early childhood literacy. To date 15,000 children have directly benefited from the five programmes and 31,000 children’s books have been distributed.
Growing the Future Workforce
Some ScottishPower programmes are aimed at developing the next generation of engineers and tradespeople to work in the industry. The company is involved in a collobartion with Government and other utilities in working with schools and colleges to promote the development of practical skills at an early age, raises career aspirations and awareness of opportunities in the profession and improves standards of achievement in maths, science, engineering and technology; develops more relevant work-based learning programmes.
The pilot programme reached more than 8,000 students and 270 teachers in 2004/05 and established after-school engineering clubs where primary and secondary children can learn practical skills in a fun environment.
e7 GROUP
e7 undertakes a Five-Year Plan of Action on Education for Sustainable Development
Established in 2001, the e7 Sustainable Energy Development Scholarship Programme awarded, during its initial pilot phase a total of three postdoctoral level awards and 11 Masters level awards. Students from Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, India, Israel, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, the Philippines, Uganda and Vietnam have received scholarships to study at universities in Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Thailand, the UK and the USA.
Building on the success of this initial Scholarship Programme pilot phase, the e7 companies decided at the 2005 Ottawa Summit to embark on an ambitious programme to promote Education for Sustainable Development (ESED).
The initial phase of this five-year programme will consist of three components:
Under a subsequent development phase, further activities such as a research fund and a programme of roving senior academic or member experts will be explored.
The e8, comprising ten leading electricity companies from the G8 countries, was formed in 1992 following the Rio Summit to examine and co-operate on major global electricity-related issues, with an emphasis on the global environment and sustainable energy development.