fbpx 2015 - What a year... - London Youth

23 December 2015

Wednesday 23 December 2015

2015 has been another year that's seen cuts in local authority budgets and as a result meant that many youth clubs have closed or scaled back their activities. But despite this, there are still hundreds of organisations working every day across London offering young people high quality opportunities to try sport, or community projects or music, drama or dance. There’s a need for more investment in these clubs so that more young people get the opportunity to do something positive and fun outside of school, and at London Youth we'll keep making the case for good youth work.

This year through our programmes in London and at our two residential centres Hindleap and Woodrow, we have directly supported 24,538 children and young people. It's been another exciting year for us, and below are just some of the highlights from the past 12 months…

January

At the beginning of the year, Talent Match London celebrated its first Birthday! – www.londonyouth.org/news/one-year-of-talent-match-london

February

Woodrow gets a face lift! The Wonderful Woodrow works were completed in February after being closed for refurbishment over the winter. We now have an even safer and more comfortable environment for our young visitors to enjoy for many years to come. For booking information, click here.

March

We proved good youth work does work! Check out some of our findings on the impact our work and members have on young people’s confidence, resilience, determination and relationships – read more here: www.londonyouth.org/news/good-youth-work-does-work

April

In April, 14 inspiring people took on the London Marathon for London Youth and raised a whopping £25,000 to allow us to continue our work with young people across London.

May

Our patron of 69 years, HRH the Duke of Edinburgh visited two of our member clubs, Queen's Crescent Community Association and Wac Arts. We are extremely thankful to Prince Philip for his support over the years. For the full story from this special day, click here.

June

We launched our new Petchey-fied Tower at Hindleap Warren following a generous £75,000 grant from the Jack Petchey Foundation. It has added another adrenaline filled adventure to the Hindleap Warren experience which is accessible to all. Click here for the full story.

July

July marked the launch of the Vision for Young Londoners to 2025. An initiative to make London’s countless opportunities accessible for the young people of the capital. We'll be doing more work around this in the run-up to the London Mayoral Elections in May 2016 so watch this space! 

August

In an external evaluation of our social action programme, Athan 31, we found that approximately 75% of participants feel that they have developed key skills in communication, planning and teamwork. And 91% of young people and 100% of youth professionals would recommend the programme to others, with all youth professionals stating that Athan 31 met the needs of young people.

September

It was that time of year again! City Pitch time! Five groups of young people from our member clubs pitched their ideas to a panel of judges in the hope of wining £1,000 to have a positive impact on their communities. See how they got on here: www.londonyouth.org/news/work-hard-have-fun

October

The 2015/2016 Dare Londoners got stuck in straight away, starting with a residential at Hindleap Warren. Meet our Dare Londoners here and check out this article about what they got up to on their residential.

November

Our recent evaluation of the London Youth Quality Mark confirmed that our quality assurance framework boosts funding, capacity and continuous improvement for youth clubs. We held our first celebration to recognise the hard work of our members who are striving for quality, and so far 42 have achieved a Quality Mark accreditation in 2015.

We also became the first youth infrastructure organisation to achieve the Gold standard of Ambition Quality+. This was a brilliant acknowledgment of how we structure and deliver our own support to youth clubs and young people. We’re proud to practice what we preach. See the full article here.

December

Once again, the whole of Team London Youth came together for our annual Team Day. This is a day where we celebrate what we’ve accomplished and build our relationships within our organisations. We went Back to the Future through a time line of London Youth and its history, starting in 19th century where it all began, traveling to the future where we shared our hopes for the years to come as an organisation and youth work as a whole.

Rosie Ferguson, Chief executive of London Youth, commented:

“We at London Youth still have so much more to do: We’ve had a great year, but we will not be good enough until every single young Londoner is supported and challenged to become the best they can be."

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