Our Past Programmes
Each of our programmes is primarily designed to work with young people, identifying their requirements in order to move them forward to become active citizens within their community. Our programmes are beneficiary led, interactive and explore thought processes towards choices they make.
Reed Sports leaders awards project
The Reed sports programme works with people aged 18+, and helps them to progress in to further education, apprenticeships or jobs. We will also focus on ensuring that we work with those who have criminal records or are ex offenders or are homeless.
There will be a combination of mentoring and group support work for the people we work with.
The project is funded by The Mayor of London’s European Social Fund 2019 – 2023 Programme, and started in October 2020.
Brixton Creative Works Project
The Brixton Creative Works Project involves recruiting young people aged 16-24 who are unemployed, set on leaving school, or not in education or training and helping to get them back into education or employment.
We aim to sign up 37 young people on to the programme, secure employment for 8 young people within the creative industry, support 12 young people with education creative industry and help 13 young people to start employment in creative industries and remain there for a minimum of 6 months.
The project is funded by The Mayor’s European Social Fund (ESF) Programme, Greater London Authority and Get Set. It started in June 2021 and ended June 2023.
Walcot Programme
The Walcot programme is a school reintegration and family support package for young people and their families. The programme facilitates conversations to create a positive climate for young people, schools and families to work effectively together by delivering our Social, Attitude, Family, and Environment (SAFE) and Strengthening Families through Character Education (SFCE) programmes.
Both SAFE and SFCE are 12 week programmes delivered in parallel:
- SAFE provides mixes intensive one to one mentoring and nurturing group support
- SFCE provides support for parents and families by bringing together peers who have common concerns or challenges
The programme is funded by the Walcot Foundation and is due to run until 2022.
Transition Programme
The Transition programme is a mentoring programme providing intensive support for students transitioning from primary to secondary school, as well as students returning to secondary school after the 2020 COVID lockdown and summer holidays.
The first students were referred to the programme in October 2020. 70 young people were mentored and 20 families. Due to the national lockdown, they had not attended school for several months before September. This created unusually high barriers for the young people to overcome.
The programme is funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, and ran from October 2020 to March 2021.
Year 6 Transition Project
The Y6 Transition Project was a mentoring programme in which intensive support to young people was provided during the transition from year 6 to 7, and also in returning to school after (4 months) lockdown. We aimed to prevent the young people struggling from the impacts of lockdown from falling behind their peers. The mentors encouraged young people to make plans to follow in order to get the most out of school.
YourStory mentored 13 young people continuously across 2 different schools (Lambeth Academy and Platanos College). 11 of the 13 young people continued their mentoring on to the National Lottery funded Transition Project.
The programme was funded by Lambeth Council, and ran from July – October 2020.
Wraparound Programme
The Wraparound programme was a pilot project investigating how intensive, young person-specific mentoring can best be used to reduce offending and reoffending in young people identified as high risk.
Throughout the project, our mentors worked with the young people in one to one and group sessions, as well as supporting them in securing external training to improve their employment prospects. We also worked with the families of the young people and supporting agencies involved in their development as part of a holistic approach.
87% of young people who took part reduce reoffending after our support. 77% of young people who took part had increased attendance to their youth justice appointments. 82% had increased employment prospects, and 88% had increased resilience to conflicting situations.
The programme was funded by the National Lottery Foundation, and ran from 2017 – 2019.
The Big Q
The Big Q was an interactive, fast paced choices programme delivered to schools in Lambeth. The programme empowered students to speak to peers and family against extremism. The programme challenged many forms of segregation and brought help to those who may feel isolated or alienated from society.
Young people, in groups of up to 30, were given real life scenarios surrounding extremism which demonstrated violence, illegal use of social media, promotion of fear, segregation and extremist ideologies. The groups explored the influences and thoughts behind decisions they made for each scenario.
90% of the young people who took part found the workshop useful in helping to understand extremism. 100% of the young people who took part learnt how extremists can influence them and their social circles. 87% of the young people who took part feel more confident in sharing information with the appropriate authorities, and 68% now have a sense of belonging to their wider community.
The project was funded by the Home Office’s Building A Stronger Britain Together Programme, and ran throughout 2019.
Cicely Northcote prison project
We worked with ex prisoners and visited HMP Brixton prison in order to assist with rehabilitation into society. We were invited to host a Q & A session on Prison Radio to discuss the employment and volunteer opportunities that YourStory offers, which was broadcasted in prisons nationwide.
Support provided included helping soon to be released prisoners find accomodation, supporting a young man through controlling his anger management and helping them to find employment. 3 ex prisoners, upon release, began to mentor and support some of the young people that we work with, benefitting not only themselves but the young people in their community.
The project was funded by The Cicely Northcote Trust, and ran from 2019 – 2020.
The Hampton Project
The Hampton Project was an alternative education programme. The project focused on young people in secondary school who had been excluded from mainstream education. Mentoring support & education were provided to them.
We also placed a strong focus on reducing reoffending behaviour whilst providing academic education and carpentry skills up to GCSE and BTEC level for the young people we worked with
The project ran from 2008 – 2018.
Sports Leadership and Education Programmes
Sports Leadership Programmes have run frequently through YourStory’s history, as the charity has origins in sports coaching as a form of mentoring. These programmes help to develop leaderships skills, presentation and preparation skills as well as innovative thinking in our young people.
Besides the Sports Leadership Programmes, we also ran education focused ones, with recognised OCR, ASDAN and AQA qualifications combining both vocational and academic learning. These helped with personal development and achievement in areas such as personal finance, health and safety, community involvement and sports.
These programmes ran from 2003 – 2010.
Prison Me No Way Programme
The Prison Me No Way Programme introduced young people who either previously had offended or were seen as vulnerable to offending behaviour about the realities of the Criminal Justice System for young people.
We showed them real life experiences of the Criminal Justice System and provided them with strategies to turn their behaviours around.
These programmes ran throughout the late 2000’s.
The Gifted and Talented Programme
The Gifted and Talented Programme involved us working with 25 young people aged 13-16 who were seen as being vulnerable to exploitation or are currently offending or are part of gangs.
The young people had weekly 1 to 1 mentoring sessions for 6 months with one of our mentors each as well as group work sessions. These group workshops addressed gang and offending related issues on order to improve decision making. Following the completion of the mentoring and group work sessions, the young people completed a residential course in which they demonstrated their improved behaviour, educational grades and presented an action plan for the next 6 months of their lives.
This programme was funded by the London Community Foundation in partnership with the Evening Standard. It ran from 2012 – 2013.
The Traineeship Programme
The traineeship programme ran over several weeks. It set young people up with different employers so that they can develop new and existing skills. Several workshops were a part of this programme, such as: first aid workshop, confidence workshop, communicating well workshop, industry training, work placement chats and visiting local businesses, to name a few.
The young people received progress reports each week to ensure that they understood what was going well, and what areas could be improved. This programme improved their career opportunities and employability prospects hugely.
The project ran throughout 2018.
The Hyde project
We supported and engaged disadvantaged families on one focused estate, as well as supported children in getting in to private schools. The aim of this project was to support the family unit as a whole. Throughout the duration of this project we worked with parents who had children with special educational needs (SEN), and the impacts of this not only on the child but also the parents.
We also worked with and supported families who were at risk of eviction, had a disability in the household, had a young person in the household who had offended or had family issues either historically or currently. 15 families participated.
The project was funded by Hyde, and ran throughout 2019.
Paid mentoring
Young people were mentored one morning a week over the time period allocated fo this project. We mentored at 2 different schools for this projects (City Heights Academy and Lambeth Academy). The mentoring at Lambeth Academy was paid for by social work, and the mentoring at City Heights Academy was paid for by the school themselves.
We have strong relationships with both of these schools, and frequently mentor at both.
This project was funded either by the school themselves or by social work, and ran during June 2021.
