Mark Fordham was almost 12 when London won the Olympic bid
but he remembers that time for another reason — the sudden death of his father
from a heart attack.
Mark had been an outstanding primary school pupil, achieving
well above the national level in his SATs but the loss of his father hit him
hard and his schooling suffered. Three years later, just as he was getting back
on his feet, his mother broke the devastating news that she had been diagnosed
with breast cancer.
“My mum was head down on the table, crying, in a really bad
state,” recalled Mark. “She started chemotherapy and radiation and a series of
injections to shrink the tumour and I had to go with her to hospital to learn
how to inject the medicine.
“Mum later had the tumour surgically removed, but she was
weak and close to death. I was terrified that I was about to become an orphan
and had no idea how I would look after my 10-year-old sister. I had my GCSEs to
worry about, too. I was passionate about computers and dreamed of becoming an
electronic engineer, but for the next two years I put all that to one side and
became my mum’s full-time carer.”
Mark ran the household — shopping for groceries, cleaning
their 6th floor council flat in Holborn, paying the bills out of income support
— and attended school erratically.
“In my GCSE exams, the few I wrote, I had one question
repeating in my head in the examinations hall: what will I do without any
parents? I found it impossible to focus.
“But putting my mum first worked because she recovered and
now, thankfully, she’s healthy, though I failed every exam and I left school
without a single GCSE. At first I struggled with my confidence, but I had
tremendous drive to get on the first rung of the ladder and start making a
living. I made up to a dozen applications a day, online at websites like
Gumtree, InRetail and Reed, and in person at Jobcentres. I would also apply at
stores like Sainsbury’s and Iceland.” In the last three years, Mark, who is now
18 and living with his cousin in Beckton, estimates that he’s made “several
thousand” job applications and been interviewed “40 or 50 times”. “Some
interviews didn’t go well. I was nervous, I had no work experience, sometimes I
would feel that I’d said the wrong thing and clam up. But sometimes I did well
and got my hopes up only to never hear from them again.”
He said that Jobcentres, rather than assisting, were “a
nightmare”. “If you call them, they don’t pick up. When you go in, the jobs
they suggest are useless and never work out. I’ve never got a single interview
through the jobcentre, but they make you waste your time signing on once a
fortnight and talking to personal advisers who don’t help.”
This year Mark decided to take a pre-apprenticeship level-2
course in IT as well as English and maths GCSE-equivalents as a step towards
improving his qualifications. “I’m a natural whiz at electronics,” he said. “I
hoped it would bring me closer to my dream job — electronics engineer at a
computer or mobile phone company.”
Recently Mark had a small breakthrough, securing a
short-term work placement, but it will soon be over and he will have to look
for work again.
“I am bright, enthusiastic, hard working — I’ve just had a
few bad breaks,” he said. “I just need somebody to give me a chance.”
Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 19th September
2012
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/marks-story-im-a-whiz-at-electronics-bright-and-hardworking-i-just-need-somebody-to-give-me-a-chance-8156449.html
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