LOCHGELLY High School’s Employability Initiative is making a real impact on both pupils and the local business community.

The school regarded itself as extremely fortunate to be visited by two local business leaders, John Penman from Fifab, and Frankie Hodge, from Lochgelly social enterprise, Recycle Fife, who took time out from their busy schedules to deliver presentations to senior year pupils.

Both of the companies are taking part in the school’s Wider Achievement Employability Initiative, an innovative new programme designed to help pupils into employment.

John Penman is the Marketing and Sales Director of Fifab, one of the UK’s most advanced manufacturers of precision sheet-metalwork, electro-mechanical assemblies and precision machined components, and also one of the most successful sub-contract manufacturing companies. Fifab invest heavily in training and are a long term supporter of apprenticeships in Fife. John is also chairman of Impact 21 (formerly Business Gateway Fife) and has 20 years experience in the manufacturing industry.

During his talk, the former Lochgelly pupil gave a thought provoking story of how he had worked for over 20 years in manufacturing, going from an apprentice to his current role of Sales and Marketing Director of Fifab.

He talked about working hard and taking opportunities, and reminded pupils that competition for jobs is hard and that learning the correct skills to apply for jobs would make a huge difference to their success or failure.

Frankie Hodge, Operations Director of Recycle Fife, which is based in Cartmore Industrial Estate in Lochgelly, spoke to pupils about the operations at Recycle Fife and his own personal journey to success with rugged honesty and evident streetwise knowledge.

Frankie said, “I was delighted to be invited to be a guest speaker at Lochgelly High School as part of its Wider Achievement Employability Initiative.

“The remit of my talk was to speak to pupils about the different types of skills and training they need in order to successfully apply for jobs and take part in interviews, and how Recycle Fife is offering to help them.

“As part of my talk, I explained to pupils how I had turned my life around following some wrong choices I made, and how I managed to overcome many challenges, including a lack of skills, homelessness, becoming a single parent, and long term unemployment, and that as a result of turning my life around, along with my partner, I co-founded one of the most successful social enterprises in Fife.”

A social enterprise is a business with social aims, which effectively means that all income generated through its commercial activities, is reinvested back into the enterprise to enable it to fulfil its social objectives.

He added, “I set up Recycle Fife with two main aims, one of which is to stop waste going to landfill which we do through by providing recycling services including skip hire, and the other is to create employment, training placements and volunteering opportunities, particularly for those who are deemed as furthest from the jobs market.

“Since we started over nine years ago, we have been able to create 138 jobs, of which over 70% were offered to people who had real problems getting their feet on the employment ladder. Not all these staff are still with us as some have moved on to bigger and better jobs.

“We see Recycle Fife as a stepping-stone. One of our objectives is to give young people a chance to work with us, gain real work experience and learn employability skills to help them get into meaningful employment”.

Frankie concluded, “Recycle Fife has been asked to be a partner as part of the project with Lochgelly High School and we are delighted to be able to offer real work experience to the pupils.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity that they have here, especially with the support of the teachers, school and local businesses behind them to give them as much of an advantage as possible in their quest for employment. All the team at Recycle Fife are looking forward to taking part.”

The pupils were clearly engaged by the success stories of the speakers and were keen to ask further questions about both their stories and the placement opportunities that are available at both Fifab and Recycle Fife.

Sixth year pupil, Bobby O’Hagan, said, “The employability initiative has been very good for us as a school because it’s helping us by showing what employers look for in employees. After the talk Frankie Hodge and John Penman gave I had a chat with them and they said I could go to Fi-Fab or Recycle Fife any time I wanted. They were very encouraging and were happy to help.”

Programme leader Ray Fernie added his thanks to Fifab and Recycle Fife, “John Penman has been a great supporter of Lochgelly High School over the years and has endeavoured to be actively involved in initiatives which help our young people be successful.

“Fifab’s first contact with the school was through a phone call asking why there were no pupils from Lochgelly on their workforce.

“Their next response was to organise a visit to talk with our pupils. Little did we know at the time that MD Archie Smith and John would appear on our doorstep half an hour later to deliver their pitch to a captive audience. From that point on Lochgelly High School has reaped the rewards of this unique relationship with Fifab.”

It is great to see an increase in the amount of skips Recycle Fife are delivering to the Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy and Leven areas.  We have taken on a few new customers whose own work ranges from supplies to manufacturing and building work to healthcare.  Collecting a variety of materials ranging from pallets to cardboard and office paper to soil or rubble and a lot more in between.

We have even hired a skip to Channel 4 for a programme they were making in Kelty, so please look out for us on the television too.

Since delivering our first skip back in January 2010, Recycle Fife Skip Hire has fast become a first class skip hiring service, providing customers with cheap, competitive prices.

Due to the steady increase in skip hire, Recycle Fife is pleased to announce the introduction of a new vehicle to our fleet – a 7.5T DAF skip lorry.

This vehicle is capable of delivering all of our skips and will replace our Ford Transit skip vehicle, which unfortunately wasn’t able to keep up with the current workload and provide the service required.

At Recycle Fife, we don’t like to see things go to waste though, and our Ford Transit skip vehicle is in great condition so we have decided to sell it on.

Recycle Fife would like to say “thank-you” to all of our customers, who have helped the company grow, and a warm “welcome” to any new customers using our skip hire service.

For more information regarding Recycle Fife Skip Hire , please visit the  Skip Hire section of the website.

If you are interested in hiring a skip or have any queries, don’t hesitate to call our office on 01592 781 984 for a FREE quotation.

Michael Dickson (20) from Cardenden is the first young volunteer in Fife to receive a five hundred hour Saltire Award for volunteering.

The Saltire Award, sponsored by the Scottish Government, is an hour-based Award Scheme to recognise, reward and thank young people for their volunteering work. Young volunteers can gain a number of certificates beginning with 10 hours all the way up to 500 hours.

Michael volunteers with Recycle Fife, a local Social Enterprise based in Lochgelly. Recycle Fife provides recycling services and raises awareness of the possibilities of recycling throughout Fife. As a Social Enterprise, Recycle Fife also provides invaluable training and volunteer opportunities.

In March 2011 Michael applied for a job at Recycle Fife but due to a number of reasons Managing Director, Jackie Dunsmuir, was unable to offer him paid work. However, Jackie did not want to turn Michael away, and Michael himself did not want `to go back to doing nothing’. So he started volunteering at the unit. `It stops me from getting into bother, keeps me on the straight and narrow’ said Michael. He does whatever is needed and has gained so much experience working machinery and communicating with other people.

Jackie can only sing Michael’s praises. `Michael has been great’ she said `He comes in four days a week, he always turns up, he’s never late.’  Jackie went on to say that Michael was quiet at first but is now very talkative and confident – although his dancing, witnessed at the Christmas night out, is not so good!

Michael is modest about his achievements, saying that he just wanted something to do, adding `There is nothing better than doing something’.

Article taken from  www.volunteeringfife.org

A LOCAL MP has reacted with anger after it was revealed that long-term youth unemployment in his constituency has soared by more than 900% in a year.

And Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes andCentral Fife) has warned that drastic action is needed immediately to halt the staggering rise.

The MP for Cardenden and Kinglassie said this week, “We are in grave danger of having a whole generation out of work and both theUKand the Scottish Governments must act now to stop this worrying situation”.
(more…)

What does ‘recycling’ mean? To most of us it means extra different coloured bins in your garden, or at your gate, and groans as you try to work out which item goes in which bin, and on what day.

What happens to the bins and their contents then, after collection? The contents are taken away, broken down to their basic components, and then re-used in the making of new items, yes?

But what happens when the things thrown away to be recycled are not consumer items, but valued people with valuable skills? At the Social Enterprise, ‘Recycle Fife’, in Lochgelly, there is no scrap heap for workers. In the absence of new apprenticeships, and in the context of communities where many families have known generations of joblessness, Recycle Fife has pledged to give a chance to those previously written off.
(more…)

18 May 2012

New Waste (Scotland) Regulations have been passed by Scottish Parliament, which will require all businesses to separate paper and card, plastic, metal and glass for recycling by January 2014. Businesses that produce more than 5kg of food waste per week will also need to separate this for collection.

To support the changes required by the regulations, Zero Waste Scotland will be investing £8m in councils and commercial waste management firms this year, including £5m to support the roll-out of new food waste collections and £750,000 to help increase the availability of collection services to Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs.)

Zero Waste Scotland is also supporting collaborative approaches to recycling collections, designed to make it easier and cheaper for SMEs to recycle by working together. Pilot projects are underway in Bathgate, Falkirk, Clackmannanshire, Alloa, and Dumfries and Galloway.
(more…)

Two raids in January saw fuel stolen from a Lochgelly company along with electric cabling.

Staff at Recycle Fife saw them lose the best part of a day’s work collecting and recycling the host of items, which has made the social enterprise a highly successful operation.

Company Director at the Cartmore Industrial Estate operation, Jackie Dunsmuir, told the times that the raids had cost the company over £1000 but that no one at the successful social enterprise was throwing in the towel.
(more…)

Lochgelly based Social Enterprise Recycle Fife has received a £580,000 investment from the Scottish Investment Fund (SIF) of which £290,000 is loan capital. SIF is managed by Social Investment Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government. This significant investment will enable Recycle Fife to expand its Recycling Depot, invest in new machinery, and create new jobs.

Since inception, Recycle Fife have created over 120 jobs. Recycle Fife offers recycling collection services including skip hire from its Lochgelly base to homes and businesses all over the kingdom of Fife, in addition to the recycling activities it also is one of the largest providers of volunteer training placements across Fife and has built up a great track record of raising awareness of the environmental benefits and importance of recycling. This facility will continue to operate to generate income to reinvest in supporting the expansion of its local services and create new jobs and training posts and also repay the loan capital provided by SIF.
(more…)

Recycle Fife is a Social Enterprise, which was formed in 2003 in opposition to proposed plans for a landfill site. Frankie Hodge and Jackie Dunsmuir joined an action group to look at alternatives to Scottish Coals proposals for the landfill site.

Born from this was Recycle Fife, which sees Jackie and Frankie at the helm. 8 years on they have 21 members of staff, 3 regular volunteers and various work placement contracts. Recycle Fife are situated in Cartmore Industrial Estate in Lochgelly, and now have the capacity to recycle everything from old milk bottles to wooden pallets and microwaves!

They currently provide services to a variety of companies throughout the Kingdom including NHS Fife, SM Baynes, The Purvis Group, schools and other local businesses.
(more…)