Who we are
About us
With a history spanning over a century, UK Youth is a leading national charity committed to ensuring all young people are empowered to build bright futures, regardless of their background or circumstances.
It’s our mission to provide all young people with access to appropriate, high quality services in their local community or online.
We sit at the heart of a national network of members, brought together through our merger with Ambition, to support an estimated one and a half million young people across the UK. Together with our network, we offer support, advice and training to equip young people with the vital life skills needed to engage in education, volunteering and employment.
Underpinning everything we do are three core values:
Who we reach
We work with young people across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland through our Nation Partners: Youth Scotland, Youth Cymru and Youth Action Northern Ireland. The majority of the young people we work with are aged 8-24, primarily from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The most common personal barriers reported by young people in our network were:
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| Low income family | Not in employment, education or training (NEET) | Special educational needs (SEN) | Young carer | Mental health challenges |
How we reach them
The young people we work with are encouraged and supported to get involved with our work voluntarily. They typically find out about us through the local youth organisations in our network, their friends and family, our staff team, or via referral partners (including schools, social services, the police, the NHS, and other local service providers).
How we offer support
Through our delivery model, we are able to strengthen and grow local services to offer advice, support and guidance to young people by:
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2020 vision
By 2020, our aim is to create a movement of youth organisations committed to supporting young people from all backgrounds and circumstances to build bright futures. Together we will ensure access to appropriate, high quality services for all young people in every community.
To achieve our 2020 aim, we are working to ensure:
Young people access support in their community or online
Young people develop life skills
Young people engage with training, volunteering or employment
Our impact
All our programmes are designed with a clear understanding of the learning and outcomes we hope young people will achieve. In addition to the programme specific skills and knowledge they gain, we also measure emotional and social capabilities (ESC). These capabilities are sometimes referred to as life skills and include communication, self-awareness, resilience, motivation, receptiveness, confidence and responsibility.
Through our programmes, we measure young people’s pre and post ESCs to ensure we’re creating impact and empowering young people with the skills they need to engage with employment, volunteering and training.
Through the evaluation of young people’s pre and post ESCs, we’ve found that our programmes consistently deliver high impact to young people who begin our programme reporting low life skills:
The UK Youth Social Development Journey provides a framework to support and empower young people to develop life skills.
Our history
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1925 
1950s 
1961 
1970 
1980 
1987 
2001 
2015 
2016 
2017 Our people
Lady Anne Stoneham MBE has been our chair since 2014, and been on the board since 1988
The former motor racing champion became President in 1999 and continues to work tirelessly to promote the charity. Nigel has taken on a host of fundraisers raising over £1 million for UK Youth.
HRH, Patron since 2003, makes a number of personal appearances each year on behalf of UK Youth, and has a genuine understanding and passion of the positive impact UK Youth has on young peoples lives
Lady Anne Stoneham MBE has been our chair since 2014, and been on the board since 1988
The former motor racing champion became President in 1999 and continues to work tirelessly to promote the charity. Nigel has taken on a host of fundraisers raising over £1 million for UK Youth.
HRH, Patron since 2003, makes a number of personal appearances each year on behalf of UK Youth, and has a genuine understanding and passion of the positive impact UK Youth has on young peoples lives
Our partners
None of the work we do would be possible without our partners.
Our governance
We are a charitable company limited by guarantee incorporated and registered in England under company number 05402004. We were founded in 1911, as the National Organisation of Girls Clubs. Over the years, we have changed our name several times, most recently to UK Youth, in celebration of our 90th anniversary in 2001.
We’re governed by our Memorandum and Articles of Association and detailed regulations made under the Articles.
Our registered office address is; UK Youth, Avon Tyrrell Activity Centre, Braggers Lane, Bransgore, Hampshire, BH23 8EE.
We’re registered with the Charity Commission under number 1110590.
The UK Youth Social Development Journey