Northern Trains Ltd expand its partnership with Virgin Moneys to support young people from Keighley (Digital and Financial Inclusion)

Northern Trains Ltd works with higher education providers across the North to raise awareness of employment opportunities in the rail industry and build travel confidence.

Our aim has always been simple, to support the communities we serve by raising the aspiration horizons of young people from the towns and cities across the network. For example, working with Bradford City of Culture 2025 the youngest city in Europe where many young people lack the confidence to travel independently could we make a difference . By building that confidence to seek employment beyond your local area and community significantly increase ss young persons access to employment opportunities.

Keighley College is an example of an exemplar organisation committed to forming partnership with Northern and others to build that rail confidence with young people and look beyond what they know and are comfortable with.

Our work recently with young people from Leeds , Calderdale and Hull has highlighted perceived exclusion from online digital banking amongst young people, again a perceived barrier to employment.

How could we work with our partners to address this to open that online offer to digital ticketing?

Step forward our partners at Virgin Money to align their corporate objective to address financial inclusion in the North. Putting theirs and our and objectives together and aligning our provision for communities could we do something that benefits both organisations but more importantly benefits young people in the North.

This week we saw our first event which was a huge success for Northern, Virgin, the college and most importantly our young participants. We have now found template which we will replicate throughout 2023/4.

This approach we think has the potential to support hundreds of young people over the new few years.

A huge thank you to all the volunteers from Northern, Keighley College and Virgin Money who supported this event, but a special mention for Lesley Dutton – Virgin Money who word tirelessly to make this happen this week.