In October 2021 a team of eight interns from Lenovo met with EBP South and decided to partner and invest in a programme of events to support Lenovo’s education engagement and outreach project. This included attending four in-school workshops as business volunteers, sponsoring the Primary Schools’ STEM fair and TeenTech™ Hampshire Festival, and being the event partner for Get Inspired Basingstoke, reaching over 1,400 students from across Hampshire and having a significant impact on the provision of careers information. 
The first sponsored event was the Primary Schools’ STEM Fair in March 2022, which saw 290 primary school students from across Hampshire learn more about STEM careers through taking part in different interactive activities. The Lenovo team provided an activity on the day that involved programming Lego robots. The Flying Bull Academy attended the event and Year 6 Teacher, Corey Burns said “The children have loved the activities throughout the day. It’s great for them to have a go at things they can’t access at home or at school. They’ve been inspired by the different careers and some are going home to research about colleges and STEM careers.” By engaging with students throughout the day the interns had the opportunity to inform students about Lenovo and to challenge STEM career job role stereotypes.
Business volunteers from the wider Lenovo team also attended four in-school events across the year, reaching over 400 students. These events included Business Speed Networking, Employer Interviews, and Interview Preparation Days and gave students the opportunity to learn about different industries and career paths, develop their employability skills and work on their interview techniques. By attending these events the Lenovo team have had a direct impact on the future workforce and helped to bridge the skills gap.
“Having not long been in the shoes of the students, I can really understand the difficulty of understanding potential career options, and the lack of awareness as to what I could do after leaving full-time education. Working with EBP South and attending its STEM events, we have enjoyed working to provide industry and role insights to the students, which we hope will help when it comes to making their career choices. It has been extremely rewarding talking to students about the world of work, understanding the value of creative thinking and different approaches to problem-solving. I got to know some of the students really well, listened to their interests and ambitions, and had the opportunity to offer advice if needed.” – Nick Cameron, Placement Student
Get Inspired Basingstoke in partnership with Lenovo took place in May 2022, with the event reaching over 400 students. This event provided students with the opportunity to learn about different industries by participating in interactive activities. In feedback from the day 86 per cent of student respondents said that at the event they had learnt about job types or careers that they didn’t know about before the event. Kayleigh Richardson, Head of Year 10 and Teacher of PE, Science and D
ance at Brighton Hill Community School, when asked about the school’s experience at the event, said “What a fantastic day. Our students have left truly inspired. Meeting so many businesses has made today an absolute hit with our students.”
As well as being the event partner, Lenovo provided several activities on the day which demonstrated how Lenovo helps to create impact globally and across different industries. This included a space coding challenge, a race driving simulator, and a demonstration of artificial reality technology. This gave students the opportunity to experience using new technology and think about the diverse variety of career paths that will be available to them in the future.
Rachel Parker, Business Relationship & Training Manager at EBP South said “It has been a privilege as part of the Lenovo and EBP South investment partnership to work with the Lenovo Intern Team at each stage of their schools’ outreach and engagement project. By providing fun hands-on educational activities at our inspirational careers events and participating in the ‘Your Futures’ employer-led workshops they have helped many young people identify and develop their own interests, talents, skills and confidence whilst learning about the world of work and new technology. Career exploration is an important part of a student’s journey and through partnering with EBP South Lenovo have been able to directly raise young peoples’ aspirations and increase the awareness of the varied career opportunities and pathways they can offer the future local workforce. A personal reward of this unique partnership and project has been supporting and observing the development and growth of the eight Lenovo Interns as the academic year has progressed.”
“Hampshire has been home to Lenovo for over 17 years and we’re committed to serving our community. Collaborating with organisations like EBP South is vital to help prepare our young people for life outside full-time education. But more importantly, inspiring them to study STEM subjects at university and go on to technical careers. Innovation fuels tech companies like Lenovo, so it’s vital we’re exciting the engineers, developers and critical thinkers of tomorrow.” Adam Lupton, HR Director, Lenovo UK and Ireland.
