Rod Aldridge
Rod Aldridge is an entrepreneur with over 40 years experience of working in the public and private sectors.
He is the founder of the Capita Group retiring in July 2006 as Chairman. Subsequently he established The Aldridge Foundation to continue his work on public service reform and to focus on his charitable activities.
Overview
The Foundation was established in July 2006 by Rod Aldridge, the founder of the Capita Group, to further the work of his charitable trust. The Foundation is primarily focused on the effects of educational underachievement and social exclusion on the young, but also in removing the barriers to the reform of public services in general.
The Foundation is a small dedicated team, whose focus is on delivering a number of high profile activities in Birmingham, Darwen near Blackburn, Falmer near Brighton, London, Salford and the South West. It is the hub of these activities promoting the ideals of The Foundation and supporting Rod in his role either as sponsor or chair in delivering these projects.
The Foundation looks for projects where we believe, through our involvement, we can make a real difference and where there is opportunity for matched funding or better from third party sources to accelerate the pace of implementation or the scale of change. In particular, The Foundation wishes to tackle difficult and contentious social issues promoting innovative and practical solutions through working with appropriate delivery partners.
The projects that The Foundation has been involved with in the past, is currently working on or plans to start shortly, are as follows:
- Several contributions have been made to towards the cost of administering The Prince’s Trust xl programme designed to assist those young people aged 14-17 who are at risk of underachievement or exclusion from school. The Trust has approaching 1,000 clubs in schools across the UK influencing the lives of over 15,000 young people.
- Sponsorship of a City Academy in Darwen near Blackburn. The Darwen Aldridge Community Academy will open in September 2008 and is planned to replace the existing school. It will have 1,600 pupils with an age range of 11-19 including, for the first time, post 16 provision for 400 pupils where none exist at present. The specialism of the Academy is entrepreneurship describing self-starting, highly motivated and confident learners who make full use of every opportunity of personal and community success.
- A contribution for five years towards the establishment of a Centre on Public Sector Partnerships at Birmingham University to encourage the working together of public, private and third sector organisations to achieve improvements in public services. This will draw upon the experiences of the past and encourage new innovative solutions for the future challenging current thinking by policy makers.
- A pilot project for young offenders to be rolled out nationally. The Prince's Trust 1-2-1 project, will focus on stopping the high percentage of re-offending that is experienced at present. The programme will be delivered mainly by people who have offended themselves in the past and successfully reintegrated back into society, offering 1-2-1 support for current young offenders.
- The Aldridge Foundation and v are funding the “We Are What We Do (WAWWD) Youth Volunteering Programme". The scheme will create 200 new volunteering opportunities in 2008, for 16-25 year olds across England and inspire a new generation of community action and social change. We are looking forward to working with such an inspiring team, whose previous projects include, Change the World for a fiver and Plastic Ain’t my Bag.
- In April 2008, a seminar was organised to listen to the voice of current and former offenders. The event was a unique approach to criminal justice evaluation; debate was restricted to users of the criminal justice system. Download a copy of the report here.
The Foundation also has a number of projects under consideration and will make announcements regarding these projects at the appropriate time.