I’ve just returned from the first of a series of regional events run by The National Youth Agency about the Government’s ten year strategy for positive activities for young people - ‘Aiming High for Young People’. The events are digging deeper into the challenges and opportunities of change around workforce development, creating markets for commissioning, developing integrated capital strategies, and promoting the continued empowerment and participation of young people in their communities. This is a key time for real changes across the statutory and voluntary sector’s support for young people - with big implications for innovators from all backgrounds.
The ten year strategy notes the big problems presented by young peoples social exclusion and sets a vision for challenging it.
To help pull together the wealth of shared learning, ideas and experience of action that can help us tackle young peoples social exclusion and the wider issues young people face we’re capturing video interviews and sharing presentations from each of the 9 regional events (the first should be online here later today) - and we’re hosting an online discussions space open to all policy makers, practitioners and innovators to contribute their thoughts directly against components of the strategy document.
We would welcome input from Innovation Exchange members, and will be seeking to feed ideas and actions that are shared through the site into the events themselves.
To throw in the first of the videos we’ve gathered, just towards the middle of this clip, Anne-Marie Edwardes from the Government Office Yorks & Humber shares some stark statistics about socially excluded young men in Leeds.
Ah - embedded video doesn’t appear to work in comments. So you’ll find the video here.