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Experiencing Building Lives
During his stint as Inside Housing’s guest editor, Pete Bond spent the day at the Building Lives Tower Hamlets training academy as part of our Homes Work campaign coverage.
When I arrived at Bromley-by-Bow station on a grey Tuesday morning I made my way in the rain to the Building Lives Tower Hamlets training academy. Despite the weather I was really excited to be visiting Building Lives, an organisation I had heard lots of positive things about.
On walking into the academy I was greeted by apprenticeship officer Deepak Chavda.
Deepak is a really upbeat character with an obvious passion for the work that he is doing with the three intakes of apprentices who spend time at the academy throughout the week.
Deepak gave me a great overview of the project and how it differed to traditional apprenticeship programmes. For a start, Building Lives created construction based opportunities for individuals from the age of 16 and had no upper age limit. In fact, the oldest apprentice was in their 50s.
I found it fascinating to hear about the personalised approach that Deepak and his colleagues took in supporting the apprentices to overcome any barriers to work that they may be facing. These barriers were often highly significant and ranged from literacy, substance misuse and even gang affiliation.
Deepak emphasised that his role was as much about giving the apprentices a basic understanding of employers’ expectations as it was about the technical skills around building and maintenance.
Building Lives had even gone to the lengths of providing a basic breakfast – hot drinks and toast – after recognising that some of the apprentices were hungry and as a result could not concentrate on their work.
After chatting with Deepak I spoke to some of the apprentices. It was obvious how much the Building Lives programme meant to them both in terms of having a reason to get out of bed in the morning, but also in regards to the positive effect that it had on their overall wellbeing.
The apprentices spoke openly about how they had improved self-esteem and how their relationships with parents, friends and partners had improved.
I’m really proud of the housing sector’s track record for providing excellent apprenticeship opportunities such as Building Lives.
Despite this, the sector needs to radically improve the overall coordination and communication of our activities relating to apprenticeships.
For these reasons I’m supporting Inside Housing’s Homes Work campaign and I would advocate other housing professionals and organisations to follow suit.
