On the 20th November we have been visited by Jim Knight MP See below what DWP have written about us:
GREAT STRIDES IN LEICESTER FOR FIRST FUTURE JOBS FOR YOUNGSTERS
Employment and Welfare Reform Minister Jim Knight MP today (20 November) visited award winning social enterprise Stride to meet some of the first young people in the East Midlands to benefit from the national £1 billion Future Jobs Fund.
More than 3,600 jobs have been pledged so far across the East Midlands to help young people and those in unemployment hotspots get jobs. Over a thousand of these new opportunities will be in Leicester city and county.
The minister met previously unemployed 18-24 year olds who have now found work through the Future Jobs Fund including Scott Dainton (21) of Fleckney, working for Stride as a brickwork technician and Marija Ilic (20) from Leicester working in Stride’s furniture warehouse in administration.
We have been on the news in the East Midlands Today section on BBC on thursday the 27-March-2009.
Stride’s highly successful furniture business, based in the centre of Leicester is about to expand across the East Midlands with new stores and warehouses in Nottingham and Derby. New staff are being employed in supervisory positions to work with a large workforce consisting of long term unemployed adults and adults from the probation service, helping them to re-engage with the working environment. The workforce assembles returned flat pack catalogue furniture which is then sold through a network of shops; the furniture is all new and very affordable. The alternative destination for the flat packs would be landfill. In many ways therefore it is the ideal recycling model, with many people benefiting from a simple idea.
