NE Youth is a leading North East youth development charity, hoping to provide a high quality, diverse and positive youth offer in the North East through their own services. I spoke to Director of Youth Programmes, David McCreedy to find out more about this brand new pilot scheme.
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00:00 We know schools have probably pressures in terms of their own enrichment initiatives
00:10 and at the same time youth work organisations like ourselves sometimes struggle to engage
00:16 with young people. So working together with schools is going to enhance the enrichment
00:20 opportunities for them.
00:23 NE Youth and Youth Focus NE has been awarded an exciting grant which is hoped to give young
00:27 people further access to high quality enrichment opportunities.
00:32 Well I think the activities will be kind of developed with the young people and what's
00:37 available locally. So Youth Focus NE will be covering schools in Middlesbrough and then
00:43 Youth Focus NE will be covering some schools in Durham. And I suppose the idea behind it
00:49 is about the way we'll do it, we'll co-design an enrichment offer so work with local providers
00:56 within those areas. And also that will be aligned to the local needs because what happens
01:02 in Durham isn't necessarily what's needed in Middlesbrough. So what we'll do through
01:07 that is we'll develop local partnerships.
01:10 The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, joint with the Department for Education, has
01:15 awarded the partnership a £2.7m grant to act as delivery partners for the exciting
01:21 new Enrichment Partnerships pilot. Set to run to the end of March 2025, the pilot aims
01:27 to test whether providing centralised support to schools around enrichment has a positive
01:32 impact on the quality and uptake of enrichment activities locally, without leading to additional
01:38 costs and resources for schools.
01:41 What we wouldn't want to do is set something up that young people aren't going to enjoy
01:46 because then they'll not enjoy the enrichment, they'll not get anything from it. You do have
01:51 school and that's the formal education and you've got youth work which is the informal
01:55 education and it's about how we can support young people so if we can enrich their lives
02:01 by providing additional activities and different opportunities, it's going to benefit their
02:07 formal education as well because they're engaged with services.
02:13 The enrichment and non-formal learning is hoped to include cultural trips and exchanges,
02:19 open access youth clubs, sports, arts, debating and public speaking. Ever since the pandemic,
02:26 it's clear that disadvantaged children have fallen behind and as a result, it's hoped
02:30 this method of alternative education will help to improve the lives of young people
02:34 in the region.
02:35 We've seen a massive downturn coming out of the pandemic but we still see the knock-on
02:42 effects that it had. This project is obviously a pilot so there'll be a lot of testing out
02:49 and seeing what works. There will be varying opportunities for them to get involved, how
02:54 that's advertised, how it's delivered. We're not too sure yet because we're just in the
03:00 formation stage of that project.