The Skill Mill
Andy Peaden
The Skill Mill is an award-winning social enterprise providing paid employment in watercourse and horticultural services to young ex-offenders, promoting financial independence and reducing reoffending. They enhance engagement, participation, employability, and education to improve life chances.
They focus on ensuring young people secure long-term employment and avoid the adult criminal justice system. Over the past ten years, The Skill Mill has worked with over 450 young people, with less than 10% reoffending.
Skill Mill works with young ex-offenders, often experiencing poverty. Beneficiaries complete a poverty stoplight questionnaire to self-assess and create action plans, helping them move out of poverty into paid jobs, positively impacting their families and communities.
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The Skill Mill's success comes from us creating an identity shift within a cohort of young people who have become conditioned to being excluded and on the outside of normal life. Our young people experience financial and vocational inclusion and begin to see themselves differently, they realise that they can make a difference, and they become optimistic for their future.
I'm really excited about the potential for utilising the Changemaker programme to identify how we might upscale this to ensure that we can positively impact more young people across the country.Andy Peaden, Director at The Skill Mill