Prime Minister Launches New Youth Leadership Fund
Gordon Brown has launched a major youth leadership programme for young people aged 13 to 19 aiming to increase the opportunities for them to lead change in their communities. The Youth of Today Leadership Fund has been set up to fill outstanding gaps in the provision of leadership opportunities available to young people. The Fund will help to support programmes with grants and will identify new innovations that could lead to greater sustainability and creativity in the sector in the long term.
The grants aim to:
- Help more young people take on leadership roles in their community.
- Create more opportunities for young people to influence the decisions affecting them.
- Raise the quality of youth leadership opportunities.
- Enable small organisations to grow.
- Support innovative projects that are unlikely to find funding from other sources.
The programme which is led by a partnership of charities headed by the Young Foundation has a total budget of £1 million to be spent by March 2011 to support organisation through two funding schemes.
“Scaling Up” grants of between £5,000 and £20,000 are available for organisations working with young people to scale up their operations or projects to the next level. The next funding deadline for Scaling Up grants closed on the 31st July 2009. The next funding round will be in the Autumn of 2009.
Organisations with a proven track record can also apply for a limited number of "Reaching Out" grants of between £75,000 and £100,000 to set up new projects. The next funding deadline for "Reaching Out" grants is the 20th November 2009.
