FOSEC is a local company based in Derry/Londonderry.  We work between schools and employers to help students prepare to enter the world of work.  Going to work and going to school are very different, so we are here to help students make the change from one to the other.

We have been going since 1999 and we get stronger every year.  We now deal with more than 2,000 students every year from schools throughout the North West area.  We are primarily funded by Department of Education (DE) and we also receive support from the schools we work with and Derry City Council.  All these groups think the work we do with students is very important which is why they give us money to carry it out.

We help students to improve their skills and make them better employees of the future.  This benefits each student, but it also helps our city as a whole, because if we have people who are able to do a variety of jobs, we will be able to attract more companies into the area, making a better place to live.

We feel that the best people to help us teach students about going to work are people who are working themselves.  They are the experts in their field and we encourage them to pass this knowledge onto local students.  We have contacts from hundreds of different businesses across the North West and we ask them to help us help students prepare for the world of work.

Our biggest programme is Work Experience and we place around 1,200 students every year.  We get people from local companies to go into the classroom through our Adopt-a-Class programme, and we offer excellent careers advice from this website, in the Jobs For Me section.  There are photos of all these programmes in the Photo Gallery section.

We are quite a small team, with only 5 full time members of our team.  But we are very dedicated to helping students and seeing them learn new skills which will benefit them when they leave school.  We look forward to continuing this work and helping to take our city through to the future.