Nat Tallis

Fourteen year old Nat Tallis Lock from Forest Gate Community School in East London recently spent two weeks at PEF on work experience. This is his account of his time with us:

Work experience at Private Equity Foundation has been a unique, enriching experience. I have learnt lots, and enjoyed the trust and responsibilities my colleagues have given me.

In particular, I was very pleased to accept the project Aliyyah set me – to research potential partners for Vital Regeneration’s Studio Plus and find out information on them, from the availability of public transport to the facilities and room hire prices.

I have also been invited to several important meetings with Shaks Ghosh, who is the Chief Executive Officer of PEF. One of the most interesting of these was the European Selection committee meeting at Tower Brook, Ramez Sousou (PEF’s chair of trustees)’s offices, in which the board decided whether to fund two German charities (SchlaU! [A charity that educates refugees in basic German and other skills, and helps them find apprenticeships and jobs] and JobAct [a charity that uses theatre to help German young people develop skills through theatre such as carpentry, marketing and teaches job searching skills such as CV writing) that made their respective pitches to the board. The day before, a practice run-through was prepared, and it was fascinating to see the improvements the representatives made to their presentations.

I have, I feel, received a very good impression of what it is like to work in an office. However, I realise that this experience is possibly one of the best I will have (unless I choose to get a paid job here at PEF) because all of my colleagues are exceptionally kind and friendly, and I know that I could get a lot worse. Also, I am interested in PEF and what it does, and many other office jobs would probably not satisfy me, because there are not many other types of organisation that I would consider interesting to work in or with.