James and Paige working in 'the cage'.

Here is James’ report of what the experience meant to him:

“Though I knew what Youth Connexions did, I was not sure exactly what I would be doing, but, as it was work, I did expect something boring.

"Though I did spend some time filing away forms in alphabetical order and putting letters in envelopes I did many other things as well, such as learning how to properly write the address on an envelope, reorganizing a storage room, making a spreadsheet to keep track of equipment going in and out of that storage room, ordering new supplies, and writing and editing letters.

"The storage room  which holds the equipment available to the youth workers is called the cage, I assume because its walls are made up of metal bars, and Paige and I were asked to clean up and organize it, and keep it that way. To do this we spent most of Wednesday looking through boxes, moving things around, putting art supplies in one area and camping equipment in another, and then writing a list of everything in the cage.

"To keep track of what was taken in and out of the cage by the youth workers, I created a spreadsheet to show how much there was of each item, how much was taken, how much was returned, and when it was taken and returned. To make it easier to use, I put conditional formatting on two of the columns in the spreadsheet to make the ‘Date Taken’ column turn red if the date in it was from more than a week ago, so it would be easy to see what needed to be returned, and I also made the ‘Balance in store’ column turn red if the number of the item in the cage was less than the total number of items, showing at a glance that something had been taken, and needed to eventually be returned.

"In addition to organizing the cage I also got to help write several letters. It was interesting to write letters that would actually be used, rather than just writing for an exercise or exam at school, and put to use what I had learned at school in ICT and English, such as mail merge.

"I also found it very interesting to see how places like Youth Connexions ordered supplies, and see the warehouse just next to the cage, where resources for schools such as exercise books are stored. Ordering supplies and writing letters for real events was not something that I had done before, and was definitely good experience.

"I felt that overall, as I had no previous experience working in any kind of office environment, I have learned a lot while working at Youth Connexions, and it has definitely been valuable and enjoyable work experience.”

Find out more about how Youth Connexions supports Work Experience opportunities.