International Women’s Week 2024 – Inspiring Inclusion

Written by Zaina Ali, Senior Project Manager – Education Works

For International Women’s Week, we celebrated incredible female leaders and empowered young minds in schools across east London. A huge shout-out to our amazing volunteers who made it happen. In the Education Team at ELBA, we know how vital it is to inspire young women and show them the limitless possibilities they hold in their future careers. This year, we worked very closely with Sarah Bonnell School to help facilitate their annual prefect interviews for the Year 10 students and also their career carousel for the Year 9 students.

We started the week with 47 corporate volunteers supporting the prefect interviews. Sarah Bonnell’s Prefect Team is unique in that they are not only supporting the school’s leadership team with essential tasks, but they also act as role models of the school, representing the school’s core values: Be Proud, Aim High, Work Hard, Be Kind, No Excuses.

The volunteers had an important yet difficult task of interviewing 150 aspiring prefects, asking a series of questions about their passions and skills, to evaluate if they make the cut to be part of the final 15 students who will go on to be the student leadership team in their final year. The volunteers also had an important part to play in the selection process as they provided feedback for each student, as well as choosing students they thought shined the most!

An exciting and eventful week came to close, once again at Sarah Bonnell School for the career carousel! We invited corporate female volunteers to come in and provide insight into their roles and their career journeys. The students rotated between classrooms, gaining a better understanding of what it means to be a successful female in the corporate industry. The volunteers also touched upon which female is the most inspiring to them, and shared what inclusive initiatives their firms had to offer to female employees. Students were inspired when hearing about the different companies and the career opportunities available to them in the future.

Here is what the volunteers had to say about their experience:

Part of our work at ELBA means helping students from ages 11+ to boost their confidence surrounding their employability skills. Taking part in such crucial workshops helps a diverse set of female students to feel empowered and inspired and enables them to learn from female role models; which is key to education. We hope that through our continued work in schools, we will give young people the opportunity to think about further opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge, and appreciate their values, so that they can make change happen as women leaders of the future.

Thanks again to our dedicated volunteers for making these events so valuable for our students!

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