3 March 2020
UK Youth is delighted to announce 78,123 young people will benefit from the recently distributed UK Youth Fund.
One hundred and sixty-eight (168) different organisations and community groups who work with young people, across all corners of England have received grants to enhance and expand existing sessions, activities and spaces for young people.
Vital grants ranging from £360 up to £20,000 will go towards funding a range of youth-focused work including sports clubs, counselling services, creative writing workshops, crime prevention sessions, equipment for children with disabilities and more. The grants will also provide hundreds of hours to keep evening and weekend youth centres open for longer.
UK Youth’s reach to over 5,500 youth organisations ensured it was well-placed to distribute £1,163,851 in small grants to youth clubs and centres across the country. More than half of applications were from smaller organisations with less than £250,000 annual turnover.
Launched by former Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan, at the ‘SoapBox’ youth centre, London, the UK Youth Fund forms part of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s Youth Accelerator Fund.
The £7 million government investment was established to address the vital and urgent need for investment in the youth sector which has suffered over £1 billion in cuts over the last decade (Out of Service, YMCA, January 2020).
Applications opened on Thursday 30th January, and organisations had until 5 pm on Tuesday 11th February to submit their application. UK Youth received a total of 1469 applications, requesting more than £15 million in total.
Ndidi Okezie, UK Youth CEO, said “It’s incredible and overwhelming that over one million pounds has gone out to the UK Youth Movement supporting so many positive activities for young people. We’re delighted at the response, especially as the vast majority came from small organisations.