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Frederik’s Journey: From Drama Club to Jack Petchey HQ
We are always excited to discover inspiring stories involving young individuals!
This blog post is from Frederik, who talks to us about his journey as an Achievement Award Winner!
About Me
My name is Frederik, I’m 15 years old and I won my Achievement Award for helping my school’s drama club.
Attending the event to collect my award was very fun as there were performances such as original songs, covers of songs and poetry by other talented young people from different schools.
I felt proud to be recognised for my hard work and commitment to helping younger students at my school, especially with something that I enjoy (drama). Winning the Achievement Award made me want to continue to help others in the club. I went on to help my school by using my grant on props and costumes for the drama department, then helped with creating and directing a performance of Jane Eyre (which I adapted into a play) that we performed at the start of July.
Not only did winning the Achievement Award improve my confidence in my capabilities, but it also opened up doors for activities/events and roles that I may not have been able to easily access without the confidence and recognition I gained.
Why I Wanted To Do Work Experience With the Jack Petchey Foundation
Having won one, I was curious about how the Achievement Awards, the grants and how the Jack Petchey Foundation overall worked. That is why I was glad I managed to do my work experience here because I thought that it would be interesting and fun to try something new and I also wanted to explore the local area as I had never been there.
However, I have learnt and am continuing to improve many transferrable skills that I can definitely use in other jobs later in life such as communication, creative writing and organisation.
What I Did During My Work Experience Week
On Monday (my first day), I was extremely nervous before I arrived, but this feeling was quickly lost as I met Nadia, the Operations Officer and Khushi, the Operations Assistant and I received a tour of the building and then I introduced myself to everyone I will be working with. Everyone was very nice upon introduction, and this made me extremely excited to start working!
Now, you may be thinking that since it was the first day, I wouldn’t have anything to do, and it would be terribly boring. However, you would be mistaken as I was given a few long (but not tedious) tasks like filling in information on the database and writing press releases for Chelsea, the Communications and Engagement officer.
Some more things I did during my week were packaging a lot of the medallions for the Achievement Award winners and then framing, wrapping and packaging certificates for the Leader/Achievement Awards. I also used Excel to make a spreadsheet of some of the employees’ expenses. I had never used Excel, nor have I dealt with expenses, so it was a good experience to try out and gave me a good idea as well into budgeting and being aware of what and how much you spend.
I also got to look through many of the recent Environmental Award winners and got to see what they are doing with the grant money. This was an exciting task as I had never really heard of the Environmental Award, and it was cool to see what interesting ideas the winners had in mind with their grant.
My Takeaways
Overall, I had a really great time with work experience at the Jack Petchey Foundation. It is extremely fun as all the team here were nice, kind, caring and the work was very interesting. I have learnt a lot and realised how much work is put in by everyone here and how much time it takes to put these events into place.
So, I highly recommend that if you want to go somewhere enjoyable, where you will have fun at work experience and want to learn key skills like admin work, teamwork, communication and more, come to the Jack Petchey Foundation for your work experience.
Also, if you want to put yourself on the map (whether it be at school or even later in life for a job), try and get yourself nominated and win the Achievement Award because as you read earlier, it certainly helped me in many ways!