YMCA Norfolk awarded £500k for coaching project
YMCA Norfolk has been awarded almost £500k in grant funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to deliver a county-wide training, education and employment programme.
Life Ready Work Ready will reach homeless and vulnerable young people, aged 16-25, across Norwich, Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn, providing vital coaching support alongside their current housing operations.
The Life Ready Work Ready project strives to break the cycle of homelessness and improve young people's ability to sustain future employment, gain independence, raise aspirations and create an appetite for further education, training and personal development.
Set to launch in January 2024, Life Ready Work Ready will provide support to an anticipated 432 young people over a 3-year period and create 5 new job roles across the organisation.
John Lee, YMCA Norfolk CEO, said: “We are thrilled to have been awarded £490,298 of funding to continue our critical work in addressing the barriers that our young people face when accessing training, education and employment.
“Through building a thorough five-stage programme, which supports project participants from stage 1 (pre-contemplation) to stage 5 (action into independence), clients will receive support which is not only bespoke to them and their goals, but also allows them to take part in training and attain qualifications at a pace that best suits them.
“Our youth and communities’ team have worked extremely hard to develop the Life Ready programme, and thanks to this new lease of funding, we are positive that its delivery will result in sustainable, long-term outcomes for our clients.”
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its new strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030. As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
Young people enrolled in YMCA Norfolk’s Life Ready Work Ready programme will engage in a variety of learning opportunities including independent living and budgeting courses as well as attaining knowledge around vital life skills such as gardening and cooking. Participants will also learn self-help and self-care skills through attending a mixture of 1-2-1 and group sessions with YMCA Norfolk’s passionate youth engagement team.
The ultimate goal of the programme is to empower young people to live independently, gain employment, and have a better understanding of how to access wider resources, including services managed by other charities, enterprises and health professionals.
Young people will also have the opportunity to mentor others, be part of the charity’s service development and have a voice in shaping future projects.
Jason Beattie, YMCA Norfolk Business Development Director, said: “We are delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to further expand our operations and press on with our plans to broaden the range of training and education opportunities available to our clients.
“As an organisation we fortunate to already have strong partnerships with other charities, funders, councils and authorities across the county. We firmly believe that the more connected we are, the more impact we have, and we’re so grateful that the National Lottery shared this vision with us.”
YMCA Norfolk is actively seeking to grow their housing and youth provisions, with the executive board continuously exploring new ways to expand operations and reach those most in-need.
Part of this expansion includes a recruitment campaign, in which the charity are seeking to appoint a new Housing Director and Chief Finance Officer to support their continual growth.
Further details on both job roles can be found at www.ymcanorfolk.org