LUKE WOODEND
Luke has nightmares about standing by a conveyor belt on an eight-hour night shift putting strawberries into yoghurts pots. “I’ve done that and believe me it is so monotonous and boring you just feel numb,” says a 22-year-old who readily admits that he wasted three years after leaving school in the summer of 2001.
TOM BARNES
Tom was 15 and still at school when he answered a local newspaper advert’ asking for Saturday boys or girls to work at Trinity House preparing food. “I knew immediately that it was a job I wanted and when I got it I also knew that it could be my first stepping-stone to becoming a chef,” says a teenager who, three years on, landed a post in the kitchens of one of Britain’s finest restaurants.
CARLOS CORRIS
“Holding down a full-time job at Lakeside after being unemployed for three years has totally changed my life. I feel good about myself, whereas living on dole money made me feel worthless. I had no confidence and, seemingly, no prospects. Now my outlook has changed completely. I have never been so happy.”
Victoria Shepherd
VICTORIA SHEPHERD gave up a good job designing kitchens in Brighton to head home to Barrow. A big, bold step certainly, but the 26-year-old hasn’t had a moment’s regret since she came through the Trinity House training scheme and then started work in Lakeside’s Ruskins Brasserie. “It’s been the perfect move,” she says. “Take it from me, the North-South divide is still as wide as ever. I have no plans to live in the South again.”
