September Newsletter

Wishing all friends of Gifted Women a good start to the new term, whatever September might bring for you. Our September newsletter is the first of many where we’ll be sharing updates, good news stories and plans in the pipeline for Gifted Women:

First up - 12 more brilliant and courageous women are about to begin our next employability programme for women in the Plymouth and Tavistock areas. It includes a fun group work programme, which will be a safe space for women who experience multiple barriers to accessing work. The group work sessions are paired with a work experience placement in a local business or organisation, giving women the chance to build confidence and take a gentle first step into the workplace.

Women can express their interest and receive more info by completing the short form on this page.

We can’t wait to build a community with this group of women and support one another on this exciting journey.

Time to Shine with The Rank Foundation

We are (hopefully) hiring and this role could create MASSIVE impact for many women in Plymouth & Devon.

Gifted Women is applying to the The Rank Foundation's 'Time to Shine' programme and if we are successful we will be looking for the right person to become our new 'Employers Community Lead'.

The successful person will bring passion and energy to assemble a whole community of employers across Plymouth and surrounding areas who are passionate about empowering women and keen to get on board.

They'll also support the amazing group of women who work with us to choose their work experience placements and access different jobs.

There’s a whole process to this and it’s a little unique - so have a look at the details and read the job description here. Next month applications will be open for our new Operations Manager role too - we will keep you posted.

Our friends at Harbour and Trevi Women do a fantastic job of hosting the Freedom Programme in Plymouth, helping hundreds of women to identify the red flags when it comes to domestic abuse each year, however we believe we have observed a real need for a programme like this in Tavistock. Through running various projects over the last year, many women have told us that experience of domestic abuse was a contributing factor in them not feeling able to access work.

“The Freedom Programme examines the roles played by attitudes and beliefs on the actions of abusive partners and the responses of victims and survivors. The aim is to help them to make sense of and understand what has happened to them, instead of the whole experience just feeling like a horrible mess. The Freedom Programme also describes in detail how children are affected by being exposed to this kind of abuse and very importantly how their lives are improved when the abuse is removed.”

Gifted Women is currently consulting with women in Tavistock around whether this is indeed needed and will then look to pursue funding to train up one of our team members to facilitate the programme. If you are in the Tavistock area, or work with women who are, we would love to hear your thoughts on this.

We went dancing!

Gifted Women trustees, team members and volunteers were invited to Street Factory CIC for a fun evening of hip hop dancing, team building and reconnection before the start of an exciting new term. There’s even a video if you want to see our Trustee Julie break dancing!

It’s so important to make time to get together as a team because we can do so much more for women when we’re energised and raring to go…

In women’s words:

“I needed the project to help me get out of the house and mix in with other people. The Gifted Women project let me find myself again and actually gave me a chance to prove to myself I am a good person. 

The group work was helpful in so many ways. It brought so many emotions out and made me realise I can be part of a team and to be independent.

The work placement was so helpful. I learnt things quickly and the staff were always on hand to help me if I needed and never got stressed with my questions or mistakes.

Now that I am working at Flourish I feel I am part of something and I am proud of myself that I can actually work again and to a good standard. All the staff are amazing and it’s such an amazing place to work and I just want to say thank you for the opportunity and for taking a chance on me.”

Employer Spotlight: Wright Clean

Back when Gifted Women was in its earliest stages, owner Richard Smith got right behind our mission to create life changing employment opportunities for women experiencing multiple disadvantage. Wright Clean has purposefully given fresh starts before to people who had come into contact with the criminal justice system and they had seen the impact of that opportunity first hand. Wright Clean have offered both work experience placements and employment to women working with us and have proved to be truly committed and caring employer, supporting one now employed Gifted Woman to start a Managing Team Members qualification. Thank you to owner Richard, manager Karen and the team.

Funding News

Special thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund who generously funded £9999, enabling us to run our employability programme in January 2023 for the third cohort of 12 women.

Thank you for reading our new newsletter and for your continued support for Gifted Women, we look forward to updating you with more news next month.

From all the team at Gifted Women.