dale lane

Solent Youth Action started life as the Eastleigh Millennium Volunteers (MV) project. The charity was started as the result of identifying limitations with that project, and expanding on it with complimentary projects which, over time, became larger than the MV work itself.

But that heritage does show through in our aims and objectives which talk about “empowering young people to develop as individuals … through volunteering whilst making a positive contribution to the community”. We are first and foremost a youth volunteering organisation.

The last year or so have been very successful for SYA, and with v funding secured for the next three years, the immediate future looks good. But what happens next? How should we continue to grow and develop?

One approach that we’ve been discussing this week is whether we should moving beyond purely volunteering. We already have a number of objectives in trying to help the young people that we work with: around their personal development. This can be emotional development, it can be skills development, it can be educational, it can be career-focused… with an underlying theme throughout of helping young people. But always, this is done through volunteering activities.

What if we removed that restriction, and focused more generally on helping young people develop?

Looking at the objectives of other youth action charities in the UK, there are many with similar aims to ourselves. Such as:

• promote, support and provide volunteering opportunities for young people (Bedfordshire)
• provide opportunities for young people to develop personally and socially through voluntary activity (Cambridgeshire)

However, there are many who have different focuses:

• support youth clubs and promote sports and creative activities (Wiltshire)
• youth justice and crime prevention (Highland)
• better equipped to take a useful and responsible place in the community (Ilderton)
• activities for young people (St Albans)
• promoting the voice of young people (South Norfolk)
• development programmes to maximise skills and potential (Northern Ireland)
• skills development and training (Northumbria)

Such a change would not be unprecedented.

There is a balancing act between havng a clear focus, and having a broad remit that doesn’t restrict activities. So any change needs to be carefully considered.

But looking far enough ahead, this could be the first step towards establishing a Solent Youth Action social enterprise. Many of the young people that we work with develop significantly during their time on SYA projects. But for some, there is still too much of a leap from leaving one of our volunteering projects, to being ready for full-time employment.

An SYA social enterprise could potentially bridge that gap – providing supported paid employment for some young people. The employment could still be ethically and socially motivated – and be an extension to the work done in volunteering projects. And would hopefully lead to supporting the young person to find full-time work outside SYA.

This would be a big shift for us – needing at least some major organisational changes to SYA, and possibly even the creation of a new company: a profit-making company that could employ young people. (Albeit one which donated it’s profits to the parent charity.)

This is all thinking out loud. At this point, we’re considering adding the investigation and exploration of this sort of change as a goal in our five year plan. But these are exciting possibilities.

Tags: charity, social enterprise, volunteering

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 8:50 pm and is filed under charity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.