This month, Career Connect welcomed guests from Suara Cooperativa, Spain’s largest cooperative, as part of a learning exchange.
Marta Julián Pascual from the Intercultural Media Service and Sergi Fortià Darder from Housing Justice represented Suara on the two-day visit. Suara has been helping people in Spain for almost 40 years through social work, social care, support for children and families, well-being and health, education and training, and employment and work.
Marta and Sergi met Career Connect teams and visited projects to learn how UK organisations support young people, adults and offenders into employment, education and training.
Achieve CFO3 Delivery
Marta and Sergei’s itinerary included St Joseph’s Bike Project in Manchester, which helps improve the employability skills of men released from custody. They also visited HMP Hindley in Wigan, to see the Achieve CFO3 delivery, a trauma-informed work trial and the Greater Manchester Employment, Training, Education project pilot to improve engagement with support services after release.
[L-R] Back row: Karen Parry, Chief Operations Officer; Sheila Clark, CEO; Sergi Fortià Darder, Housing Justice (Suara); Gary Mundy, Director of Research & Evaluation.
Front row: Chloe Elliot, Operations Manager, Education & Business; Marta Julián Pascual from the Intercultural Media Service (Suara); Lorraine Dodd, Chair of Career Connect Board.
In the afternoon Career Connect CEO Sheila Clark, welcomed Marta and Sergi to the Charity’s Liverpool head office, where they received an overview of the organisation’s growth strategy, its work supporting NEET young people, and its research and evaluation service. They also got a special preview of Career Connect’s forthcoming Impact Report.
[L-R] Marta Julián Pascual from the Intercultural Media Service, Sergi Fortià Darder from Housing Justice visited Career Connect as part of the Suara Cooperativa exchange visit.
“We share a similar mission, vision and values.”
Marta Pascual said: “We’ve seen a lot of similarities between Suara and Career Connect during this visit. We share a similar mission, vision and values. We particularly enjoyed learning how Career Connect uses digitisation across its services, seeing how their staff use data in their everyday work with communities, and discussing how to apply digitalisation, innovation and technology in social work situations.
Sergi Darder added: “We enjoyed meeting Career Connect’s staff. They understand how small things – such as helping someone set up a bank account – can make a big impact for some people. We look forward to welcoming guests from Career Connect in Barcelona, where they will hear about what we do at Suara and learn about the social work we carry out.”
Sheila Clark, CEO of Career Connect said “It was a pleasure to meet Marta and Sergi at Career Connect. As organisations that work in similar fields, we have a lot to learn from each other and we are looking forward to discovering how they work with the individuals and communities they support in Spain.”
To learn more about Suara, please click this link.
