MEaP at Ingeus Rise 2026: Build Your Future 11 May (EIA)

MEaP at Ingeus Rise 2026 session – What is it about?

Early this year, we presented our yearly employability offer to Ingeus via our customary presentation and renewed our relationship with over 25 Restart Advisers. We both agreed that the year needed a particular focus on young people considering the abhorring statistical data about young people employability in Greater Manchester. Our employability endeavour is being made possible thanks to Youth Future Foundations as part of the Evidence into Action (EIA) programme.

Ingeus organised a series of young people centred Employability interventions, to which MEaP and other Ingeus partners were invited. One of these is the Ingeus Rise 2026 aka Build Your Future. MEaP’s session was a 2-hour in-class session, built to be highly interactive and sit between Ingeus’ Walking Wardrobe session and Ingeus June employer day, bridging the two. The key details are:

• Date: Monday 11 May, 12:30 set-up, 13:00–15:00 delivery
• Where: Ingeus Manchester, St Ann’s Square, Victoria room on the first floor
• Audience: 20-30 young people, 18-25, post-residential cohort 

Teams and responsibilities

• Lead facilitators Ola (Pathfinder Educational) and Manuella (3E Web Media) handled the overview, framing, curriculum reveal, and close
• Logistics handlers Reeba and Christina took care of the logistics, including the Jenga and lego set-up and greeting on arrival
• Activities facilitators Adam (Elevate Young Minds), Manuella, and Ola handled the icebreakers, the Jenga and Lego sessions

Once the 3 teams of up to 10 young people were created, there were assigned coaches, namely Manuella (table 1), Adam (table 2) and Ola (table 3): Rove during Jenga + hackathon.

Ingeus Rise 2026 – MEaP activities

The afternoon was packed with practical activities around the themes Discover Develop Deploy ideated by Ola. Discover was about sharing skills young people know they have, discovering skills they did not realise they had, using skills they did not anticipate they could. Develop bridged the gap between the skills they have and those they need for their ideal jobs. Deploy was about applying the skills they have or developed to the many activities offered.

The young people were challenged to a jenga game that ended up with them discovering their skills and developing new ones or strengthening existing ones. We were particularly impressed with their resilience and perseverance keeping at it even when it seemed the pile of wood would collapse at any moment and we made sure to highlight that skill and strength and praise them for it.

The lego game had the most success with participants on each table being challenged to come up with a solution whose problem was written for their table. The young people showed creativity, excitement, resourcefulness, and great communication skills ideating and either designing or developing their solutions before presenting it to the rest of the room.

We closed by tying up the activities and identified skill gaps with MEaP’s offers including an invitation to the 2026 Manchester Employability Day and our various training opportunities as required.

MEaP at Ingeus Rise 2026 – Verdict

The indication is that both the young people and the Ingeus team thought the session landed really well, especially because they found the interactive sessions relevant and engaging. Some expression of interest forms were also filled which testifies to the interest. MEaP representatives certainly had a great time, meeting and interacting with such talented individuals. We were particularly impressed with the solutions proposed to our challenges because they were imaginative but more than that, they were very much fueled by experience, showcasing the young people’s used ability for collaboration, common sense, transfering skills as appropriate and more.

One of the participants, Courtney, expressed their enthusiasm towards the afternoon activities, stating that this kind of setting is missing from the over 18 offering. The whole table seemed to agree as they then went on to use the opportunity to create a proposal that happened to answer the separate lego challenge they were presented and would remedy the situation they had described.

What comes after the Ingeus Rise 2026 for MEaP to support young people with their employability?

Priority has been to convert the many expression of interest into individual learning plans before momentum drops, through phoning the contacting students from whom we had prior consent. Christina and Reeba arranged an ILP drop-in at Ingeus aiming to get interested young people in for 1-to-1 individual learning plan completion in person

Find out more about our Evidence in Action programme’s initiatives, MEaP’s employability page and Ingeus Greater Manchester Employability website.