What young people want is a green future
Coming back from a few days at Anthropy, our CEO, Julie Feest reflects on her three day conference at The Eden Project and thinks about the action she can take as an #Anthropist to ensure the days taken out to attend the event were worthwhile for the charity and young Industrial Cadets who attended and reflects on the green future that young people talked passionately about wanting!
Anthropy had an aim to combine the best aspects of thought leadership, creativity and inspiration together, in order for senior leaders and influencers from across the country to share and be encouraged to play their part in shaping our national narrative. The Covid period and how we move forward, offers a unique opportunity and moment in time to think differently and create the means to inspire change. It affords a chance to re-assess as a nation what we value and what values we will embrace to create new thinking to tackle long standing challenges. We seek to put aside what divides us as we all go about our good work to build a better, more harmonious and human centric future.
Anthropy Approach
Julie says - We were asked four questions at Anthropy about the qualities which we wish to see influencing our futures and the qualities we then contribute to the world. These are were the four ‘pillars’ of interest:
👩🏻🤝👨🏾People👉🏻What quality of life do we wish to see over the next 30 years?
🏡 Place👉🏻 What qualities of place are required for this quality of life?
💷 Prosperity👉🏻 What are the qualities of a ‘good economy’ to support our aspirations?
🌍 Global Perspective👉🏻 What qualities do we represent to the world to help solve shared issues?
Post pandemic, as a charity we have been working on a long term business plan, which reflects the changing world we live in, the purpose for the charity to help young people succeed, with a number of focused development areas reflecting the changing need. From what Julie heard, learnt and debated at the event, this is how young people feel about the world they live in and the world they want to live in, in the future and for their children -:
Young people have ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) running through their veins and are very concerned about environmental issues. They want a cleaner, greener fairer future, and do not want to work for a business that puts Profit above People and the Planet. Young people need to be heard, they can't take more complacency, and they want action from businesses. They need to be listened to, have mentors, with businesses opening their doors to them.
Young people want to work in a Purposeful Business - that's a business that takes action on environmental issues and which is aligned to their values. This is broader than just environment, for example being a Real Living Wage employer (as we are) matters to youngsters so that they know everyone is paid a fair wage.
Businesses already have amazing targets with ESG (Environmental Social Governance), heading towards B Corp, signing up to Better Business Act, but they need to recognise they need to do more in early years recruitment to articulate what matters to young people, or they will not take on the fabulous Responsible Leaders of the Future that we are developing through the Industrial Cadets programme.
Businesses need to act now to ensure they have the team they need for the future once the economy recovers and these young people leave education.
They want to work in green jobs. They want to work in a company that is going to help the Britain of tomorrow.
The UK government has the ambition to create 2 Million green jobs by 2030 and estimates that 6.3 million jobs are set to be affected by the transition to a low carbon economy over the next 30 years. This represents a market share of approximately 6% and 20% of the UK workforce and it is green jobs such as this the youngsters from Anthropy want to be doing.