UK Youth is proud to support the newly launched Commission on Countering Online Conspiracy in Schools. The commission, announced by Pears Foundation and Public First, will explore how online conspiracy theories, as well as misinformation and disinformation, are manifesting in the classroom, with Ndidi Okezie OBE, UK Youth chief executive officer, appointed as one of the commissioners..  Chaired by Sir Trevor Pears, Pears Foundation executive chairman, and Sir Mufti Hamid Patel, Star Academies chief executive officer, the commission has kicked off perhaps the biggest inquiry into ..read more

Young people are being offered the chance to boost their employability at a series of workshops in West Yorkshire. The Yorkshire Asian Business Community Action group is hosting the Building Connections workshops to build young people’s employability skills and boost their chances of landing a job. The first session, at Unity Enterprise’s Leeds Media Centre, saw Satvir Meen, project leader with YABCA, lead discussions about the importance of first impressions, confidence and having the right mindset. Satvir Meen, project leader with YABCA. A YABCA spokesman said: “Throughout t ..read more

A scheme backed by UK Youth has won a top award. The Kentucky Club, KFC‘s inclusive members club for young people aged 16-24, has won the Experiences for Good award at the 2024 Campaign Media Awards. The club – borne out of KFC and UK Youth‘s successful Hatch scheme – empowers young people to learn new skills, boost their confidence and land their first job, featuring skills workshops and job support from partners such as UK Youth. It was launched at a one-day employability event in Birmingham, supported by England and Aston Villa footballer Ollie Watkins and featuring a discussion led ..read more

Everyone at UK Youth is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Julia Rausing. Mrs Rausing and her husband Hans were huge supporters of our work, contributing £10 million to our Thriving Minds fund to support young people’s mental health and £1.3m to support youth organisations post-Covid. Thriving Minds is an ambitious fund for projects which improve mental health support and provision for young people. The Covid Resilience Fund offered grants of up to £50,000 to youth organisations in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The fund aimed to ensure grassroots youth organisations that su ..read more

Young people who engage in youth work make for healthier, wealthier and happier adults.  That is one of the findings from a suite of Government-funded research, backed by national youth work charity UK Youth.  The ground-breaking research into the long-term impact of youth work, commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, has found a clear association between participation in youth provision and positive outcomes relating to physical health and wellbeing, pro-social behaviours and education.  The analysis has followed participants for decades and fou ..read more

UK Youth is launching a new solution to key issues facing young people. The national youth work charity’s new Joined Up Institute aims to be the place young people and professionals come together to learn, turn evidence into action and solve key issues. The aim of Joined Up is to provide a real solution to the fragmented system of support provided by professionals to young people. It will do this by bringing the expertise and professionals together with young people, to help provide a fresh perspective on how each engage as a group to support young people. By 2025, it will bring togethe ..read more

There will be a General Election between now and January 2025. Although we do not know when this will be called yet, it is an important time for everyone across the UK to have their say on who should be running the country and their local area, writes Kate Roberts, UK Youth policy manager. In February 2024 we asked our Just One Question on this topic – how can we engage young people in the upcoming General Election likely to take place in 2024? The breakdown of responses to this question told us youth practitioners want to see lots of different things to help engage young people. People ..read more

UK Youth has welcomed the Government’s commitment to supporting young people’s mental health. To mark children’s mental health week, UK Youth joined more than 25 organisations, led by children and young people’s mental health charity Place2Be, in writing to the Government calling for urgent invesment in children’s mental health services. Ndidi Okezie OBE, UK Youth chief executive officer, added her name to a letter to Health and Social Care Secretary Victoria Atkins, highlighting how it is vital young people get the support they need to help them to thrive. Ndidi Okezie OBE, UK Youth chi ..read more

This is our regular policy and public affairs round-up, covering what the team has been up to at UK Youth, what young people have been saying and what is coming up in the next couple of months. We would love to hear from you, so please get in touch if you have any questions, thoughts or ideas to share with the team… What have we been up to? Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has released his Spring Budget, but UK Youth is disappointed in the lack of dedicated funding provided for the youth sector and the lack of focus on the biggest challenges facing young people today. You can read more about our re ..read more

UK Youth attended the All Party Parliamentary Group on Youth Affairs with two #iwill ambassadors, Finlay and Phoebe, and two of our interns in UK Youth‘s impact team, Emma and Isabella, writes Kate Roberts, UK Youth policy manager. The APPG is run by the YMCA. It has also historically been run by the British Youth Council, which recently announced its permanent closure. We are grateful to both organisations for creating a space for young people to have their views heard in Parliament. This session was focused on how to ensure young people’s voices are heard at the next General Election, a ..read more