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In the UK, young migrants are 6% behind in employment rates and even further behind in terms of attaining professional jobs and managerial progression, but they clearly have aspirations.
How is this fair?
They have double the rate of university degrees, despite having a socio-economic disadvantage.
Thankfully we have people like Elham Fardad and the team at Migrant Leaders who are working to change this by supporting young migrants through their mentoring program!
Migrant Leaders
Would you believe us if we told you Elham never planned to start a charity?
Before launching Migrant Leaders in 2017, she worked in the corporate world as a Finance Director in companies such as GE, News Corp, and EY.
Now, Migrant Leaders is a registered charity that provides mentoring, work experiences, workshops, training, and more, for first and second generation young migrants.
This enables these young migrants to fulfil their professional potential!
Although there are many different, complex, causes that usually block young migrants from these opportunities, Migrant Leaders are combatting this through the power of connections.
They're missing connections. Connections that can sponsor them in terms of vouching for them, connections that can mentor them, connections that can give them decision support and insights early on in their careers, give direction and a vision for their career. Elham Fardad, CEO, Migrant Leaders
With almost 3,000 young people on the five year development programme and over 1,600 senior mentors from leading firms , it is clear that we need a charity like Migrant Leaders.
But what encouraged Elham to leave the corporate world for this greater cause?
She attributes it to two things: her heart, and her head.
Elham’s heart: Something was missing. She came from a Migrant background and she felt that she was leaving the people, other migrant families,other migrant children, behind.
Elham’s head: Then the Parker Review was published in 2017 and looked at the ethnic diversity of UK boardrooms.This was the data that sparked Elham into action!
The impact that Migrant Leaders is having is truly incredible, but what is even more admirable and inspiring is that Elham is able to tell the stories of a few of the mentee whose lives have been changed because of her charity’s work.
Something was missing in my heart and I really couldn't tell what it was. I now know that I was looking around myself and realised that I'm leaving a group of people behind who I will always be a part of. Elham Fardad, CEO, Migrant Leaders
Launching a charity
As with anything new, there are a lot of learnings.
Elham’s determination is clear as she tells us how she learnt everything she needed to know about the charity world through coaching from the CEO of the ayor’s Fund for London, to reading the charity commission website.
However, there was one surprise…
Recruiting mentees was a bit harder than she expected.
It’s no wonder that Elham’s recruitment of Mentors was easily achieved because of her own connections and charisma, but reaching young migrants was a challenge.
But as we said, Elham is full of determination!
So she started by posting 400 information booklets to 400 schools, emailed schools, and did everything she could to encourage the first few schools to work with Migrant Leaders.
And her determination paid off! Now, mentees join Migrant Leaders from word of mouth, education leaders, and TikTok.
Embracing change
During the past seven years, there have been many changes, externally and internally, that have affected Migrant Leaders.
From the COVID-19 Pandemic, to managing impressive growth, Elham has been able to be involved full-time with Migrant Leaders. All thanks to her leap of faith to dedicate her time to the charity with her wonderful team.
In this episode, Elham shares her first hand experience spearheading such important and impactful work and it is amazing to listen to her journey.
Migrant Leaders app
With all this change, standardisation and automation is needed, so Migrant Leaders camn still have the capacity to give bespoke support to each mentee.
That’s where the Migrant Leaders mobile app comes in!
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This app allows for tasks such as allocating mentors to mentees and confirming them to be automated.
We’re so proud to have worked with Migrant Leaders and Elham to launch this app!
But it is important to recognise that tech cannot replace the human touch and effort that goes into supporting these young migrants to reach their full potential.
Tune in now!
To hear all of the details from Elham herself, tune in to the full episode below! You won’t want to miss any of the discussion about Elham’s remarkable journey and the positive impact that Migrant Leaders are having on the lives of young migrants across the UK.
For more things tech for good, stay tuned for our latest blog posts or shout us a holla to get in touch with us, we would love to hear from you 💚
Published on 31 October 2024, last updated on 31 October 2024
