Corporate partnerships are a central pillar of the Drive Forward approach to enabling care-experienced young people to successfully move from care into a career. Over the past decade, our partners have shown an outstanding level of dedication, creativity and commitment and our network has continued to grow in strength from year to year. We’re very proud to having created a community of businesses and individuals, who all share the belief that sustainable employment, supportive working environments and a career of their own choice offer young people from care an opportunity to live up to their potential and create a fulfilled life for themselves.

There’s certainly a lot to celebrate when it comes to successful corporate partnerships; from work placements and internship opportunities, to fulltime jobs, successful mentoring relationships, as well as employee fundraisers and financial contributions, our partners have always gone above and beyond to support the young people working with Drive Forward.

Proud of being part of such a forward-thinking and socially responsible community, we’ve invited our partners to join us for a celebratory evening on November 20th 2019. Throughout the evening, the London Cocktail Club spoiled our guests with delicious cocktails and mocktails. We were also joined by three amazing young people who by sharing their stories of growing up in the care system, overcoming multiple challenges and never giving up hope, reminded everybody in the room why they were there.

In an attempt to formally acknowledge our partners efforts and support throughout the year, we’ve now introduced the Drive Forward Above & Beyond Award. We were very happy to nominate three extraordinary businesses this year: American Express, our longest standing partner since 2015;  Tideway, a remarkable partner whose Aim Higher Days are unforgotten by young attendees, and Module Media, an innovative branding studio who have integrated four young people from Drive Forward into their team.

We were very excited to present our very first Above & Beyond Award to Andrew Walker, Managing Director of Module Media, who has personally gone above and beyond to make a real difference to the lives of care-experienced young people.

And so, we’re looking forward to another successful year 2020; to creating more opportunities and changing more young lives for the better.