Cabinet Office and Pears Foundation announce successful Youth Social Action Fund applicants
Nine organisations from across England have been awarded a share of £1.2 million as part of the Youth Social Action Fund.
Nine organisations from across England have been awarded a share of £1.2 million from the Cabinet Office and the Pears Foundation as part of the Youth Social Action Fund.
The National Youth Social Action Fund, jointly run with Pears Foundation, is committed to helping young people in deprived or rural areas to get involved in social action. The successful applicants are a mixture of national and local organisations. This announcement links to work by supporters of the #iwill campaign, a UK-wide initiative promoting social action among 10 to 20-year-olds.
The funding will go towards developing social action opportunities for over 20,000 young people across England and provide them with an opportunity to learn from these activities and share good practice.
Minister for Civil Society, Rob Wilson, said:
This government is committed to building a more compassionate society and I warmly congratulate all the successful applicants to this round of funding from the Youth Social Action Fund. The money provided by the Cabinet Office and generously matched by the Pears Foundation will enable organisations to tackle the challenges facing young people in rural or disadvantaged areas and help embed social action in their lives.
Trevor Pears CMG, Pears Foundation, said:
It has been a pleasure to work in partnership with the Cabinet Office on the National Youth Social Action Fund. The level of interest in this fund indicates that support in this area is much-needed, and we’re delighted to have been able to select a great variety of very high-quality projects. We look forward to working with these organisations as they develop their projects, and look forward to sharing and disseminating their learning across the sector.
The funding will support youth social action opportunities based on results from the 2014 Youth Social Action Survey. Find out more about the survey and the funding.
Notes to editors
Details of the 9 winners:
| Organisation | About NYSAF funded project | Location of project |
|---|---|---|
| Blackburn Youth Zone | This innovative project brings together youth organisations across the borough to create an inclusive youth social action project. This Youth Zone is 1 of the 8 Youth Zones in the North of England and the Midlands run by the organisation Onside. | Blackburn with Darwen |
| Building Futures East | Young people will be given the opportunity (and democratically-allocated funding) to develop a community project / business to tackle real, area-based issues, as well as receiving enterprise training. | Newcastle Upon Tyne |
| Leonard Cheshire Disability | Leonard Cheshire Disability’s Can Do project will create youth social opportunities that will enhance the life skills and confidence of young disabled people. | Gloucestershire and North Yorkshire |
| National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs | Young people through the National Federation of Young Farmer’s Clubs will have the opportunity to plan, organise and develop their own social action project. | Nationwide |
| Peabody | Participants in the project are supported to become Young Leaders and develop projects, campaigns and events that will benefit their peers and wider community. Young Leaders can then become Young Ambassadors and will be provided with bespoke training to equip them with the skills to represent their peers and communities across a variety of structured forums. | Greater London |
| The Key (Keyfund Federation Ltd) | The Key will improve the reach and impact of their tried and tested ‘Key Programme’. Young people will work in teams to plan, design, pitch and deliver their own social action projects. | North East, Cumbria and North Yorkshire |
| UK Youth | UK Youth will train young social action ambassadors helping them to form peer groups to run and take part in social action projects. Each group will need to submit an application for seed funding. | South West, East Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, North East, North West |
| Whole Education | Whole Education will use their network of schools across the country to work with students who will take inspiration of existing social action projects to implement their own community projects and embed the culture of social action in their school. | |
| Youth United | The Youth United Foundation will work with its member organisations and key community partners such as local authorities, community centres, schools and colleges to pilot a venue-sharing scheme in a targeted area of England. |
Pears Foundation
Pears Foundation is a family foundation and one of the largest private funders of youth social action in the UK. As a founding funder of Step Up to Serve, the Foundation is committed to increasing the number of high quality, inclusive opportunities for young people to engage in meaningful social action.
Step Up To Serve and the #iwill campaign
Government, through the Cabinet Office, have pledged to support the #iwill campaign, run by Step Up To Serve. The campaign aims to increase, by 50%, participation in youth social action (volunteering, fundraising and campaigning) among 10 to 20-year-olds by the year 2020.