Corby social enterprise founder gets MBE after 'tough' years

Laura-Jane Rawlings left school at 16 with poor GSCE results

A woman who had free school meals and left education at 16 has been honoured for her work in tackling youth unemployment.

Laura-Jane Rawlings, from Corby in Northamptonshire, set up Youth Employment UK.

The organisation started the Youth Voice Census and an ambassador programme.

Ms Rawlings said the honour was a "lovely reward" after a difficult couple of years.

Laura-Jane Rawlings knows what it is like to be a teenager trying to get a good job with poor GSCE results and the stigma of receiving free school meals.

While working in recruitment, she saw that she was not the only young adult who faced challenges moving from education to employment.

She founded Youth Employment UK in 2012 to help young people get quality jobs and have their voices heard on the issues that affect them.

Youth Employment UK aims to help young people get quality jobs

Ms Rawlings told BBC Radio Northampton: "Setting up a charity and running it, it's a tough thing.

"Anyone that's in my shoes will know that it's been a tough couple of years for charities and social enterprises, so personally [the MBE] feels like a really lovely reward for some of that personal slog and sacrifice."

With Ms Rawlings as chief executive officer, Youth Employment UK established the Youth Voice Census which, in 2022, provided the views of more than 4000 young people and was downloaded more than 66,000 times.

She also created a Youth Ambassador Programme which has supported more than 300 young people to volunteer and share their views.

In 2020 she co-founded the Youth Employment Group, a specialist policy group to support the government to reduce the impact that Covid-19 would have on youth unemployment.

Ms Rawlings added that she did not intend to rest on her laurels this year: "We provide online skills and careers information for young people and, last year, our website was visited by more than three million young people so we're going to be ramping up the advice and guidance for young people on our website."