The Young Barnet Foundation (YBF) is a membership movement set up to help grow activities and services for our children and young people. We believe the children and young people need safe space to grow and develop into resilient adults. For this, all children and young people need opportunities for learning and fun, beyond family and formal education, building strong trusted relationships with adults and their peers; leading to broadened networks, increased confidence and valuable life skills. We are part of the Young Peoples Foundation (YPF) model, working alongside newly formed Foundations in other London Boroughs and across the country; exciting times. With each foundation offering a new approach to supporting the children and young peoples (CYP) voluntary sector (VCS), there is a chance for us all to help grow youth service delivery and turn the tide in its decline. Nationally, a lot of focus is on the larger charities, but there are thousands of smaller charities delivering tremendous work on a local level, however austerity measures are having a real impact on them. Across the country, year on year expenditure on youth services has been cut, with a 2016 report suggesting a figure of £387,000,000 in the last six years. Consequently, opportunities for children and young people have significantly diminished. The Young Barnet Foundation aim to address this decline locally by working to four key objectives:
Key Objectives
• Growing and operating a grants pot for CYP VCS in the borough, through local giving.
• Developing consortium / partnership bids to support smaller players within the sector.
• Developing (in partnership with others) a venue platform matching organisations with space to organisations that need space.
• Impact Monitoring – helping organisations to tell the story, backed up by reliable data. Our Trustees and operational staff are only too aware of the needs of our children and young people and they’re equally aware of the limited funding available to address those needs. We cannot do it alone, we need everyone to pull together; support us, guide us, work with us so that we can be the best we can be and, in turn, our children and young people will be able to access services and support which will enable them to achieve their full potential.
