My journey to CET and our shared values
I’m Adam and my journey to becoming Marketing Lead at The Commonwealth Education Trust is due to being proactive in my development and I found many similarities in the charity I now work for.
In March 2020, like millions, I was placed on full time furlough and suddenly went from the usual office 9-5 to absolutely nothing. After the initial novelty wore off, I started to feel guilty that I had it easy and had no purpose to my days.
I soon realised I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the gift of time! I started to upskill by taking online courses in areas of marketing that I wanted to develop in and, six weeks into my furlough, I came across Furlonteer.
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Within a few days, I was put in touch with the fantastic team at the Commonwealth Education Trust, who also run an online platform to upskill teachers, Teach2030.
The team were so welcoming; they gave me so much freedom and trust to get on with a variety of projects. I found this incredibly motivating, so I started putting in time most days of the week and continued to do so when my six months of full-time furlough became an extended period of part time furlough.
After six months of volunteering, I was offered the chance to join the CET team in a paid freelance capacity. I did not have to think twice and accepted. Over the next 18 months, I’ve gone from having a solely Teach2030 focus to directing on the marketing strategy for both CET and Teach2030, finding new and innovative ways of working and running the day-to-day marketing output. I’m also now in the process of recruiting a student volunteer to provide them with hands on experience whilst freeing up more of my time to drive the charity forward in 2022 and beyond.
Why does this all matter? I realised my development journey has many parallels to what we do day to day here at CET.
Learning poverty affects almost 250 million children around the world. It is estimated that up to 80% of children in low-income countries remain unable to read and understand a simple story by the age of ten.
We invest in teachers because they are the most impactful resource in the classroom.
We achieve this by partnering with organisations to enhance our offering and distribute our Teach2030 platform of online courses to teachers in low- and middle-income settings. We believe in all our community fulfilling their potential, providing them with the training, opportunity and support to do. If you are an organisation that shares similar values on the development of people to drive change and growth, then we might just be the perfect match.