One in eight young people in the UK is not in education, employment or training. Nobody becomes NEET at 18 – it starts years earlier, in a work experience system that stopped working. Our mission is one number: zero.
Today, work experience is not a system. It is a lottery. A patchwork of school spreadsheets, parents' phone calls and last-minute favours. If your mum knows a solicitor, you shadow a solicitor. If she doesn't, you shelve stock – or you get nothing at all.
A week in a workplace chosen for you is not a choice. It is admin, completed. And that is the deepest failure: the current system gives young people no freedom to think, explore and choose for themselves. No way to browse what's actually out there. No way to try the thing they're curious about rather than the thing that happened to be available.
We think a country producing a million NEETs has earned the right to try something different.
One central place where every 14–18 year old can see, compare and choose real work experience, placements and first jobs – safely, with verified employers, age-appropriate by design, free forever for young people. It already exists in working form. It's called Jlinked.
Try the working prototype →A public standard that employers, schools and councils sign – and that funders invest behind. Five pledges that turn the lottery into a choice, published openly so every signatory can be held to them.
Read the five pledges →A not-for-profit that owns Jlinked and exists for a single, measurable mission: driving the UK's NEET number toward zero, starting at 14, before the statistic ever gets written. Commercial revenue from employers flows back into the mission.
Visit Jlinked →Placements advertised openly on the portal – never filled through private networks alone.
Young people apply to what interests them. Choice is the point.
Verified organisations, safeguarding-trained hosts, no unsupervised adult-to-minor contact.
Meaningful tasks and a structured reference the young person keeps.
Travel and lunch costs never the barrier – funded support for those who need it.
We are inviting the first employers, schools and councils to shape and sign the Charter now.
The state spends billions on young people after they become NEET. We're asking you to invest four years earlier – when it's cheaper, kinder, and it works.
Back the Charter. Fund the portal. Help take a million down to zero. Every listing an employer pays for on Jlinked funds a young person's first step – a commercial engine in service of a charitable mission.