COMMENT There has been much written globally around DEI strategies and companies reassessing since the US election. Change is clearly under way and, actually, it may not be a bad thing if companies look afresh at how they spend their “S” capital.
Arguably, over the past 10 years or so, too much time has been spent in committees with too much talking. Budgets need to be judged instead by the question: “What is our money actually delivering on the ground?”
I set up the Academy of Real Assets in 2020, a pan-real estate and real assets social enterprise that helps young people, particularly from challenged backgrounds and communities, take advantage of the opportunities our industry offers everyone.
We look to engage with anyone who is responsible for young people in difficult, disadvantaged communities. Schools are our main partners but we also work with the foundations of Premier League football clubs, local sports clubs, youth clubs and the English and Welsh Cricket Board.
First-class service
We take a different approach. First, we represent the whole industry not just one sector of it. The power of the academy’s proposition is that our real estate industry, unlike many other sectors, has something to offer everyone, irrespective of academic achievement. And the thing that’s missing from the social mobility jigsaw within real estate is scale. There’s lots of really good smaller initiatives but if we’re really going to make a difference, we need to have an entity that gets to tens of thousands of students every year at a relatively young age, not leaving it until people are aged 18 – and an initiative that can represent everybody, from lenders to developers and architects.
Second, we are making a difference on the ground where it is most needed. We treat our schools as clients and work hard to understand what we can do to help their students and provide a first-class service. These include careers fairs, CV workshops, talks at schools, office and site visits, work experience, apprenticeships and mentoring. Through our Youth Network we also encourage the current next generation of real estate professionals to share their time and experiences with those who are younger, from challenged backgrounds and communities. A recent example includes six-a-side football and pizzas on a council estate in a youth club, and we have been inundated with similar requests.
Third, we measure it. We make sure we know exactly what it is our members want to achieve from their social impact programmes. We match it to their needs. We are committed to ensuring our members see real value and a ROI on their academy membership, with a bespoke model to allow members to see the social impact they generate, aggregating our members’ actions each year.
Innovative ideas
Today we are delivering right across the UK, not just where corporates or investors are operational. We have more than 50 members driving this change and last month we announced Eric Adler, chief executive of asset management at Legal & General, has joined as chair as we scale the model further.
Our members are drawn from right across the real estate and real assets ecosystem. We have some of the most established companies and investors and smaller, entrepreneurial ones. These include owners, investors, advisers, architects, property managers and lawyers.
One of the stand-out activities each year is our book launch where we ask students to contribute 800-word essays on the challenges the built environment faces. Our next one is “If I could build my neighbourhood from scratch”. We publish around 30 essays both in hardback, as well as launching it online to more than 2,000 UK schools, all the time creating innovative ideas for the industry to think about how the sector can bring about change and get students to think seriously about the built environment.
Stephen Yorke is the founder of Academy of Real Assets
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