There are many benefits of work experience placements. Arawak Walton commit to offering placements each year and have hosted youngsters from a wide group of Manchester schools. Our latest placement was Ethan Money Muter from Chorlton High. Ethan started his two weeks on the 26th June and spent time working with almost all the areas of our business. We want to say a big thank you to Ethan for all his hard work.

His final task was to put together his thoughts on his time here; this is what he wrote:

“I have thoroughly enjoyed the past two weeks at Arawak Walton and think that it has been 100% worth it. The skills that I have learnt over the recent weeks are extremely valuable and will serve me for a very long time.

I would like to thank the Corporate Services team for managing me throughout the two weeks and being really, really good company.  Also, Rashid Yaman (the IT Manager) for setting me up with a username and password for me to be able to work.

On my second day (after my induction) I spent with reception because I feel  it is really important to see the front line of the organisation and the people they deal with. In general, the most fun activities that I did involved going out of the building. The first of which being a trip to Manchester Civil Court with Steven Birss (Housing Officer) to get experience of what an eviction looks like; this was extremely useful because it made me see the reality of people not paying rent.

The following day I improved my self-esteem by going to help Nahala Moyo (Data Analyst) teach some of the older residents at Daisy Bank Court to be better at using computers and other types of technology. After helping tenants on the phone at reception it felt really good to go out and physically help people who were struggling at doing something.

I was lucky enough to actually go and see the building of some new houses with Jim De Santis (Asset Manager) who gave me a real insight into the world of architecture. These buildings will be fit for residency in the near future.

Although one of the main focuses and arguably the main reason I was there was to look at finance, which I did exponentially, I spent a long time with Nahala and Sammy Mahmood Razaq ( Finance Assistant) going over vast amounts of monetary documents and learning such skills as how to make invoices and inputting different values onto graphs. Also on my last day I did the banking and sorted out the money with Kola Adkinde (Finance Assistant) which was extremely interesting.

All in all I actually learnt and got out much more than I had ever anticipated and that is all down to the staff here at Arawak Walton. They have all been welcoming and extremely nice to meet and went out of their way to help me without a complaint when they didn’t need to. So I would like to thank each one of them for the effort they put into ensuring my stay here was good.

 I would also like to give a special mention to Darren Watmough (Finance Director) who got me in touch with the organisation and Emma Redman (Corporate Service Manager) who organised the weeks for me. I’d also like to wish Chris Farnell all the best in the future as he leaves Arawak Walton on the same day as me and Karen Arkwright who also leaves shortly after. ”