On 26th September, WEDGE Collective launched the first of our Academy evening sessions, with their workshop ‘Presenting You’. Founder and Director of WEDGE Collective, Jodie Greenwood, has worked with PLACED for over 10 years now and was keen to help our participants develop their presenting skills and boost their self-esteem, after chatting to our young people and discovering this was the aspect of the project they were feeling least confident about.
We started the session with an introduction to WEDGE Collective and both Jodie Greenwood and Operations Director, Abi Inglis’s career paths, highlighting their areas of study and how they came to setting up the business.
With discussions, group chats and individual work, we covered the difference between self-confidence and self-esteem and the importance of both, target and goal setting methods and our young people were introduced to the ‘do’s and don’ts’ of networking and how to confidently present themselves in an array of professional situations – useful to their future careers and also during the progression of their studies.
Then on to presenting! Using the tips and skills picked up throughout the workshop, participants were set the challenge of writing a pitch about themselves, in the scenario that they were presenting to a potential employer, at a networking event. Jodie introduced the method of ‘elevator pitching’ to them and with the help of WEDGE’s resource booklet and timed method of writing, our participants formed a comprehensive 60 second pitch, which they went on to present to a group and received critique upon!