In this first year of the programme we have 20 young women signed up already, from two very diverse London schools. One Search is paying all the costs of the programme this year, and we see it very much as a ‘proof of concept’ year to show everyone how much we want to make this happen, and to demonstrate that there is nothing to stop it happening.

 

However, going forward we shall need sponsorship money…

 

From next year, we want 100 girls coming into Year 1 of the programme. This is going to be too expensive for us to pay for, and too much for the team to run alongside their day jobs! We therefore intend to set the programme up as a Trust in the coming months, and bring on board 6 sponsor organisations who will each donate £10k and take an advisory board seat.

 

With £60,000, we shall be able to employ someone to run the programme as their job (part-time to begin with) and the rest of the money will pay for the programme (c. £200 per module per student) and any marketing/promotional budget it needs. The Programme’s finances will be fully transparent and available to view at any time.

 

The cost of being a Sponsor will increase each year (we want to double the intake every year!) and there will come a point where we have to expand to more sponsor organisations. The benefit of being a sponsor organisation (other than the obvious) is that you will then also be the organisations that get ‘first refusal’ on placing the students when they finish University (as far as our introductions are concerned anyway, because of course they will be free to apply directly wherever they want, or just go and do a totally different career!).

 

We will run this process early in Year 5, so that the best graduates can be snapped up by the sponsor organisations.