Francesca graduated with a degree in Industrial Design in 2004 and worked for organisations such as Utility Warehouse and the Street Soccer Foundation at executive level before starting Goal 17 in 2018.
Goal 17 is a corporate training company, specialising in mentoring for equality. The cost of their training programmes for corporate clients is used to fund disadvantaged young people through employability programmes with their charity partners. Corporate clients then receive the opportunity to mentor and support those young people as they transform their lives.
The corporate mentor can accelerate and expand their knowledge of mentoring, whilst at the same time shifting their unconscious bias, as they learn the skills they need to support people from diverse backgrounds. These skills van be taken back into the workplace and can used to better develop diverse teams.
Young mentees have the chance to work with a role model, and working with their mentor helps them build the confidence to enter the job market. As a result, Goal17 has seen unprecedented levels of success in their programmes with most young people going from being homeless or NEET (not in education employment or training), to successfully transitioning into full time work.
This is done in partnership with trusts and foundations of some of the world’s biggest sporting brands. They deliver programmes with trusts and foundations of Premier League Football clubs and Premiership Rugby clubs. They have found that sport is the best tool to break down barriers and bring people from different backgrounds together as equals.
Goal17 has won numerous awards, including The National Mentoring Awards, The SE100 Index of top Social Enterprises, and The Social Mobility Awards. They have also been featured in Forbes, The Evening Standard, and BBC News.
You can find a short video showing the impact of one of their programmes for a construction firm here. Goal17 was also recently featured on BBC News, you can watch the full video here.