Giant strides

Striding Out was set up in November 2005 by Heather Wilkinson to help young people develop their business skills.

With a background in economic consultancy, Wilkinson identified a gap in the market for supporting young people through coaching. 'I think coaching is a really powerful tool,' she says, 'and a way of helping people which is especially important now,' referring to the current high rate of unemployment among young people.

For the first two years Wilkinson ran the enterprise alone, delivering and piloting coaching programmes, and building up Striding Out's reputation as a respected and increasingly well-known organisation. By the third year she was able to employ a coach, and now, at the start of its fifth year, Striding Out has a team of 15 permanent and freelance staff and ten coaches.

'We really started growing from October 2008, when we secured a contract with Liverpool Vision, which providing us with £230,000 over four years to deliver business coaching to young entrepreneurs,' she says. Working with Liverpool Vision has also given Striding Out the leverage to win more contracts. It now has three coaches working in Liverpool, and runs several projects in the city.

'Each coach buys into the Striding Out brand as a franchise and has their own strategy for the business,' explains Wilkinson. Coaches work on different projects together, pooling ideas and resources at regular team meetings. 'It is very much the strong team structure that brings people to Striding Out.'

As well as Liverpool, Striding Out also runs schemes in London and Birmingham and is planning to expand to the rest of the UK. In November 2008 it launched the Future 100 awards, which recognise young entrepreneurs aged 18-35 who are leading the way in running sustainable businesses. It has secured a contract to deliver the Future Jobs Fund in partnership with Social Enterprise London, and is running a new youth leadership programme in Birmingham with the city council.

Stepping up

Striding Out hopes to expand its Future Jobs contract in London to the rest of the UK, and to work at delivering additional training and coaching skills for young people in London. Next year, it will be delivering two programmes to help young ex-offenders re-engage with society.

The Figuring Out career coaching programme, run in partnership with Catch 22, will provide career coaching and work placement support to male ex-offenders aged 15-19. A second programme for young female ex-offenders, Take the Lead, will focus more on developing the capacity for peer-to-peer support, and will work with the Youth Offending Teams in Liverpool and London.

Among Wilkinson's proudest achievements has been the great feedback she receives from the young people she works with. Striding Out uses the client management system Salesforce to measure its impact, monitoring all its clients and collecting feedback through completion surveys, which have been overwhelmingly positive to date.

stridingout.co.uk