Kaneez Fatima is a housewife and mum of three who came to the GRoW Programme to find out about work opportunities in schools.
Kaneez said “I have been looking for work since my youngest child started full-time school last year and am really keen to find a job in either a school or college but I haven’t worked in 10 years since coming to England from India. I have a Level 2 qualification and I’ve been doing voluntary work as a Teaching Assistant but am looking at completing a Level 3 to open up more opportunities.
I heard about the GRoW Programme through a leaflet from Altmore Infant School which said that the Programme could help me find work in schools so I went along to the first session and found it really interesting.
There were around 10 other women at the session, I recognised some of the faces as other mums from school so it wasn’t too daunting. The main focus of the session was to help us improve our self-esteem and recognise our worth. Liz explained that you have to love and respect yourself first for who you are and people will then automatically respect you. I thought this was a very good lesson as most mums are preoccupied with our children and don’t give ourselves much time. Liz showed us that we could balance our time so that not everything we do evolves around our children – we need time to do something for ourselves too! This was a good motivator and made me feel more determined to explore job opportunities for myself.
I am looking forward to attending the next three weeks of the GRoW Programme. The course fits in perfectly with my day as I work in the morning, finish at 12, pop home for some lunch and then go straight on to the session before picking up my youngest from school.
What I am mainly looking for from the programme is to get the right advice, help and guidance to reach my aim of getting permanent work in a school. Whether this means gaining more voluntary work, completing training courses, acquiring qualifications or something else, I am ready to learn and I’m open to learning about anything that will lead me on to the right path to this route.