Unleashing The Creative Potential Of Young People
The People are a creative collective powered by a global community of 150 changemakers from diverse backgrounds. Their mission is to unleash the creative potential of young people, and they achieve this goal through co-creation: bringing brands, companies and young people into the same space, and amplifying the voices of young people in the creative process.
They’ve recently partnered with Pentland Brands, the owners of big names like Berghaus, Speedo, and ellesse, to create The Pentland Collective – a new mentoring scheme for 18-30 year olds. The programme aims to help young people from minority backgrounds and underserved communities to enter the world of work, with better opportunities and more confidence, in response to research showing that unemployment for ethnic minority groups rose twice as fast as white workers during the pandemic. The programme will support 15 young people by matching them up with 15 professionals from Pentland Brands, to work together every 2 weeks for 3 months.
To find out more, we caught up with Kian Bakhtiari, founder of The People. As The Pentland Collective mentoring programme kicks off this month, we wanted to know what goes into supporting young people in the progression of their professional careers.
The People’s mission is central to the work that they do. Kian tells us, “we realised that there’s a lot of talent out there, there’s a lot of talented people out in the world, but not everyone gets the same opportunities. So as we built this company, we thought, great – we do marketing work, we do creative work, we do client work – but how can we serve communities and support young people?”
During the pandemic, The People partnered with Freestar to build a mentoring hotline, which to date has supported over 250 young people by providing valuable advice. Now, in working with the global company Pentland Brands, The People are excited to be providing real avenues to enter the job market.
This is why The People’s partnership with Pentland Brands has been critical in expanding the reach of their mission. As each mentor has a different area of expertise, from law to global brand direction, the mentees will be supported in their understanding of the wide variety of professional options and experiences available to them.
On what he’s most proud of in his work so far, Kian tells us that he loves providing opportunities:
I’m proud of everyone opening doors for others, providing opportunities and increasing visibility for others, and encouraging people to believe in themselves.
