Sky have announced a partnership with Lewis Hamilton’s ‘Mission 44’ programme with a donation made towards the charitable initiative.
A two-year partnership has been formed between Sky and Hamilton’s Mission 44 initiative which aims to address the disparity between the proportion of colour students in school and universities in the United Kingdom, and help youngsters to find their goals.
The donation of £1m from Sky – which will be done in the two-year period – forms as part of the £30m package of the company put side in tackling racism. The company has listed four key agendas as per the ‘Hamilton Commission’ report released.
- ‘Preventing exclusions’ grants: grant funding for Multi-Academy Trusts to invest in interventions that reduce school exclusion rates.
- ‘Scaling impact’ grants: grant funding to support high potential or high impact interventions that prevent exclusions or improve trajectories of excluded students.
- The ‘Included’ research project: a research project to amplify the voices of a group of excluded students to discover what support they need to achieve positive outcomes.
- Early career insight programme: an early-career insight programme led by Sky to provide information, advice, and guidance on opportunities in the broadband and telecommunications industry for students at risk of exclusion and students already excluded from mainstream education.
“Understanding and addressing issues that lead to young people being excluded from school is really important to me,” said Hamilton. “Having experienced unfair exclusions during my time at school, I understand how upsetting and stressful it can be.
“When we launched Mission 44 last year, implementing initiatives such as these was a personal priority and I am grateful to have the support of Sky to help Mission 44 take action. Through this partnership, I hope we can deliver meaningful change by arming schools with the proper strategies to support and empower young Black students, instead of giving up on them.”
At the same time, Mission 44 CEO Jason Arthur stated: “Preventing school exclusions is an issue of social justice. Excluded students often must contend with a range of complex social and economic challenges, such as poverty, racism and mental ill-health, that cause them to face both disadvantage and discrimination in our education system.
“I’m delighted that Mission 44 will be working with Sky to transform the lives of some of the most vulnerable learners in our education system.” And finally, Sky Group’s CEO Dana Strong, added:
“We are passionate about tackling racial injustice and welcome the opportunity to partner with Sir Lewis Hamilton and Mission 44 to champion and empower young people. We hope our partnership will support Mission 44’s work to improve the experience of Black pupils and support them to succeed at school and beyond.”
Here’s the Hamilton Commission report highlights
Here’s latest from Peter Bayer on FIA investigation
Here’s Max Verstappen on respect for Lewis Hamilton