00:00:03 I’m Claire Sawyer. I work as an Information Architect for the National Strategies, for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. In my spare time I work as a volunteer for the Prince’s Trust, and I am working as a volunteer mentor on the XL Club programme. So the XL club is run for fourteen to sixteen year olds, and it’s working with educational underachievers, basically, and it’s an alternative curriculum for them, and it’s also to help prepare them for the workplace, the real workplace that they might be going into, so helping them with things like job applications, and CVs, and the real life tasks they might be doing when they leave school.
00:00:46 I loved school, actually. I was one of those swots, I suppose, and I worked really hard. I enjoyed every single subject, apart from maths, which I was really bad at. So in the early days, I really enjoyed being at school. I was very sporty when I was a child. I used to play badminton. I loved swimming. I did synchronised swimming for a short period of time. I became a swimming instructor, and that was when I was about sixteen or seventeen, and I really enjoyed working with young people and pushing them to try exercise, basically, and enjoy swimming.
00:01:25 So once I’d finished my A levels, I went to university and did a teacher training course, and loved teaching for the first couple of years that I was doing it, and I did it for a couple of years and also worked as an English language teacher overseas for a little while as well.
00:01:46 I can’t think of a particular turning point. I just can think that after I stopped teaching and started working in an office environment, although I was enjoying what I was doing, I felt that there was something missing, and I think that was a sort of human aspect to my life, so the only thing I could pin it down to was the fact that, although I was… I used to become quite drained when I was a teacher and I knew that I couldn’t do it fulltime, I still enjoyed the day to day contact and I suppose the slightly selfless aspect of that job, which is probably what inspired me to become a volunteer with the Prince’s Trust. It wasn’t so much a turning point but just a realisation that I needed a new dimension to my life because the nine to five can get rather dull from time to time, so, yes…
00:02:42 Okay. I think the things that motivate me as a person are feeling that I’m making a difference and being able to see some tangible effect to that difference. I’d certainly like to see myself still working with the Prince’s Trust doing voluntary work in five year’s time because I think it’s something that has enriched my life and I’d continue to draw that satisfaction later in my life as well. In fact, even more so later in life
00:03:13 My father is a solicitor, or was a solicitor, (he’s now retired) and my mother was an HR manager. Both of my parents were very, very hard working. My dad started working in the merchant navy and took quite a long time to decide what it was he wanted to do, which was probably very similar to me, actually. But when he did decide what it was he wanted to do in his career, he was… he just went for it. My mother, again, was very, very hardworking, and worked right the way through when I was a child and growing up, and that was very inspirational in itself really because it showed me that it is possible to maintain a good career and a family life as well, so that has been quite important for me to see that.
00:04:02 End
Claire Sawyer
Claire Sawyer
I’m Claire Sawyer. I work as an Information Architect for the National Strategies, for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. In my spare time I work as a volunteer for the Prince’s Trust, and I am working as a volunteer mentor on the XL Club programme. So the XL club is run for fourteen to sixteen year olds, and it’s working with educational underachievers, basically, and it’s an alternative curriculum for them, and it’s also to help prepare them for the workplace, the real workplace that they might be going into, so helping them with things like job applications, and CVs, and the real life tasks they might be doing when they leave school.
I loved school, actually. I was one of those swots, I suppose, and I worked really hard. I enjoyed every single subject, apart from maths, which I was really bad at. So in the early days, I really enjoyed being at school. I was very sporty when I was a child. I used to play badminton. I loved swimming. I did synchronised swimming for a short period of time. I became a swimming instructor, and that was when I was about sixteen or seventeen, and I really enjoyed working with young people and pushing them to try exercise, basically, and enjoy swimming.
So once I’d finished my A levels, I went to university and did a teacher training course, and loved teaching for the first couple of years that I was doing it, and I did it for a couple of years and also worked as an English language teacher overseas for a little while as well.
I can’t think of a particular turning point. I just can think that after I stopped teaching and started working in an office environment, although I was enjoying what I was doing, I felt that there was something missing, and I think that was a sort of human aspect to my life, so the only thing I could pin it down to was the fact that, although I was… I used to become quite drained when I was a teacher and I knew that I couldn’t do it fulltime, I still enjoyed the day to day contact and I suppose the slightly selfless aspect of that job, which is probably what inspired me to become a volunteer with the Prince’s Trust. It wasn’t so much a turning point but just a realisation that I needed a new dimension to my life because the nine to five can get rather dull from time to time, so, yes…
Okay. I think the things that motivate me as a person are feeling that I’m making a difference and being able to see some tangible effect to that difference. I’d certainly like to see myself still working with the Prince’s Trust doing voluntary work in five year’s time because I think it’s something that has enriched my life and I’d continue to draw that satisfaction later in my life as well. In fact, even more so later in life
My father is a solicitor, or was a solicitor, (he’s now retired) and my mother was an HR manager. Both of my parents were very, very hard working. My dad started working in the merchant navy and took quite a long time to decide what it was he wanted to do, which was probably very similar to me, actually. But when he did decide what it was he wanted to do in his career, he was… he just went for it. My mother, again, was very, very hardworking, and worked right the way through when I was a child and growing up, and that was very inspirational in itself really because it showed me that it is possible to maintain a good career and a family life as well, so that has been quite important for me to see that.
End
Claire Sawyer is an Information Architect at the Department for Children, Schools and Families and also a volunteer Mentor for the Princes Trust in their XL club programme. She used to be a teacher. When she moved to a desk job she missed the day to day contact with young people. So she works as a mentor in a club for 14 to 16 year olds.
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