About
Us
Get to Know Us
East London Connect is a widening participation charity, helping young people achieve their full educational and career potential. Since 2017 we have work with schools, offering an independent and diverse range of career and educational services tailored the specific groups, school priority areas and government career legislation.
Foreword
A foreword from Richard Akerele, Founder & CEO of East London Connect
As an East Londoner born and bred, I have seen a massive amount of change in the area; from the good old days before the Olympics and Westfields, to an area of London that is now very affluent and not always socially and economically accessible to many young people.
To help young people and the next generation of people living in East London to really enjoy living and working in places like East Village or Canning Town, I knew there were two key areas that should taught in schools:
1) aspirational educational options from college, sixth form and university
2) broad and ambitious career knowledge to help young people discover a range of roles and career paths that might help them earn enough in live and enjoy the regeneration of East London.
With these two simple focus areas, East London Connect was birthed and our first session began with year 10 pupils at East Science School in January 2017.
Key Milestones
Nov 2017: Officially registered with Charity Commission,
March 2018- first contract for educational and career services
June 2018 : selected as part of University College London’s Educate start up incubator to develop our theory of change and create evidence based programmes: Home | Professor Rose Luckin's EDUCATE | London's EdTech research accelerator (educateventures.com)
Jan 2019- helped our first student in Cambridge studying Medicine
June 2019- East London Connect’s commissioned to provide diverse candidate pool for a FTSE 100 property development company, a few candidates shortlisted for interview
March 2020: Speaker at LEDx conference at US Airforce delivering leadership sessions for young and seasoned Airforce staff
November 2020: Won contract to deliver diversity consultancy for the Foreign office to analyse current diversity recruitment strategies and develop mentoring scheme to encourage and support career progression of African-Caribbean candidates.
March 2021: Launched Black Men in Academia podcast to profile and inspire the next generation of young people to consider a career in Academia.
March 2022: Launched first ever Black Leadership Conference at Cambridge Judge Business school to inspire and equip the next generation of Black leaders to occupy senior positions in organisations
Our Clients
