Every year we produce our Social Impact Report. Filled with Case Studies, statistics and stories, our report captures the range of work that Cosmic has achieved over the previous year.
Read on to discover one of the stories from our Social Impact Report from 2021.
Everyone should have the chance to succeed in life, to develop skills and build a career. Positive People is a flexible community programme designed to help you overcome whatever challenges you face.
Run by Pluss and community partners we can help people manage the tough times, get qualified and find work.
Graham’s time on Positive People has been very focused and highlights how anyone can benefit from a bit of extra support, even if it’s just for a short time.
Graham signed up to work with Positive People at the end of April 2021, after a period of unemployment following a redundancy created by the COVID 19 pandemic. He was looking for some specific guidance to help him into his next role.
With a career history spanning a prop’s man in the film industry, engineering, labouring, working on the development on Heathrow’s Terminal 2 and roles at Hinkley Point C, Graham certainly had skills and experience to offer an employer, but there were certain areas of modern working that he needed a bit of help with, in particular, digital skills.
In terms of digital, Graham had been supported by his wife over the years. When she sadly passed away from Cancer that support went away and "[he] realised that [he] needed to use computers and had no idea how to use them properly."
"I tried a couple of courses but I just could not keep up with the work"
Over the last 3 months with Positive People, Graham has been taking part in 1:1 training with Chloe from Cosmic over Zoom. In that time, they have been developing his confidence on a laptop to get him ready for employment. Whilst Graham has developed his own understanding of his mobile phone, his laptop made him very nervous.
Topics they’ve worked on include:
- Looking after his laptop and multi-tasking
- File management
- Creating basic documents – word processing and spreadsheets
- Using cloud based services to work across devices.
Whilst Graham’s journey with learning digital has definitely not ended, he leaves Positive People with a newfound confidence to build new skills himself and give something new a try.
"Quite simply put, I am not scared of the computer any more and feel confident about using it.
“I would like to say that Laura Batcha who was my contact with Positive People who listened to my issues and put me in touch with Chloe Penfold from Cosmic who was my tutor, she made the lessons fun but serious at the same time, I cannot put into words how much Chloe has helped me with using the computer, I looked forward to our lessons and feel so much more confident and not afraid anymore."
If you'd like to know more about our support through Positive People, click the links below for the Devon and Somerset projects.