“It was a very, very different world back then,” Sandy Campbell recalls. “It was the early 1970s and jobs were aplenty, and the gap between rich and poor was nothing like it is today.”

Though his childhood was “nowhere near as challenging” as those of the young people his charity works with, the founder of WorkingRite distinctly remembers the tribulations of his transition from adolescence to adulthood and the people who helped him during that period. Offering what is describes as a practical pathway into a job or apprenticeship, WorkingRite aims to provide young people with the kind of mentors who assisted Mr Campbell in his early years.

“I didn’t go to university and feel that has not been a hampering in terms of what I have done with my life,” he said.

“So it very much comes from that route of practical learning and learning amongst older people. I remember very clearly the key adults who had an impact on me in those late teenage years.”

Initially set up in 2004 as a pilot project with the Port of Leith Housing Association, WorkingRite matches approximately 300 young people each year with small and medium-sized businesses offering “a foot in the door” regardless of academic background or previous experience.

More than half come from areas in Glasgow such as Drumchapel, Yoker, Pollock, Darnley, Govan and Castlemilk. WorkingRite also operates programmes in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, East Ayrshire and Argyll.

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Trainees complete an induction period on practical guidance for the working world before they are individually matched with a business in a field of their chosen interest. Almost half opt to go into one of the construction trades, but WorkingRite operates across all sectors – Mr Campbell notes that one trainee is currently learning to be a chocolatier.

But in all instances there must be an older person in the business who will mentor a trainee that has likely been “batting against the odds, starting off life three-nil down”.

“Young people heading for university get all kinds of career advice, but young people who the school have low expectations of, and who are almost definitely going to leave at 16 don’t get that level of support, and that is what we are providing,” Mr Campbell said.

“[Businesses] understand that they are getting a young person who is coming to them not because they have got lots of passes at school, but because they have demonstrated their attitude to work and punctuality and their commitment to doing it.”

Mr Campbell grew up in Edinburgh and from the age of 15 worked weekends and school holidays in his father’s paint and wallpaper shop in Leith. He left aged 17 for Yorkshire where he lived mainly in Sheffield for about 25 years, working variously as a care assistant, bus conductor and gardener, and became increasingly involved in the trade unions.

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“That eventually got me into the town hall in Sheffield and I did some very interesting jobs including working very closely as an assistant to the leader of the council at that time who was David Blunkett, who I have kept in touch with since, so that is another example of what is at the heart of our beliefs which is that it is relationships that make all the difference to the direction that a young person takes,” he said.

“Sure, qualifications help and they are essential for many jobs but I always felt that the over-emphasis on qualifications and university as the only way forward – particularly under Tony Blair’s push for increasing the percentages for university – wasn’t a solution on its own.”

He came back to Scotland in 1998 to be closer to his father and was working as a self-employed community research consultant when he started to form the idea for what would become WorkingRite. The notion grew out of his own personal interest in what he describes as the “rite of passage” into adulthood, plus other “fortuitous conversations”.

“The first of those was a talk in my local community by Sir Tom Farmer speaking about his childhood days in Leith,” Mr Campbell said.

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“It was how he spoke about his childhood and leaving school and setting up his first garage very near where my dad’s wallpaper and paint shop was that inspired me. I wrote him, I met him, and he gave me some early funding to help the pilot get going.”

As the project expanded, WorkingRite became a registered Community Interest Company in 2008, and then a registered charity in 2011. About 60 per cent of the budget for its programmes and staff of 15 project coordinators comes from government sources, with the remainder funded by private groups such as the Robertson Trust and the Hunter Foundation.

In all that WorkingRite does, Mr Campbell emphasises the need for flexibility and tailored support. The average trainee period lasts three months, but it can last as long as a year and in once case stretched to two and a half years.

Mr Campbell credits this with the programme’s success, with 70% or more of trainees moving into full-time jobs, apprenticeships and in some cases college: “Our goal is to go deeper rather than wider – short-term courses don’t produce that life-changing result.”

Q&A

What countries have you most enjoyed travelling to, for business or leisure, and why?

France, because I love everything about the French: their food, their impeccable etiquette, and of course their unbelievably challenging and beautiful language. Also, over the last 30 years I have grown to love Portugal, and latterly Brazil, whilst picking up the basics of, for me, a much simpler language. Then in 2008 visiting Argentina to finally meet my relatives from my mum’s Anglo-Argentine heritage; journeying to a faraway land to be embraced by distant cousins who felt so familiar.

When you were a child, what was your ideal job? Why did it appeal?

Art was my love at school. I dreamed of becoming a painter to emulate Vincent Van Gogh. I was so convinced this was my true vocation that I managed to convince the deputy head that I would never need to learn maths or science and was allowed to officially skip those classes for my last couple of years at school to paint instead.

What was your biggest break in business?

Early inspiration and encouragement from Sir Tom Farmer for my nascent idea after hearing his stories of growing up in Leith, followed a few years later by start-up funding from Sir Ian Wood to establish WorkingRite as a social enterprise in 2008.

What was your worst moment in business?

When WorkingRite lost its biggest contract in 2016. The trustees questioned whether we were still a “going concern” and were poised to wind up the charity. My business partner and I then hatched a rescue plan which meant painfully and rapidly halving the charity’s workforce. We survived by the skin of our teeth and six years later we are bigger and stronger than ever.

Who do you most admire and why?

Winston Churchill for his oratory, wit, and leadership in our darkest hour. His example of overcoming the threat of annihilation whilst keeping spirits and belief high have been an ever-present inspiration.

What book are you reading and what music are you listening to?

The Cut by Christopher Brookmyre – for the second time. He captures the truth of our childhood and adolescence in such beautiful prose and conveys vividly the shadow those years cast on everything that follows.

Musically, Mozart remains the king. In my youth it was Bowie. Now it’s a mix of James, the Waterboys, Pink Martini,The Divine Comedy and Leonard Cohen.