European Social Fund in England

Fairbridge removing barriers to learning

What's the Project all about?

This project engages 30 disaffected and disadvantaged young people aged 16-19 from the most deprived areas of central London. It provides a holistic, innovative personal development programme aimed at reducing barriers to learning improving their basic, personal, social and life skills and using action planning, goal setting and intensive one-to-one support to enable them to engage or re-engage with structured learning. The innovative and challenging personal development programme tackles various key and basic skill deficiencies and will improve the beneficiaries numeracy and literacy skill as well as tackling the source of their disaffection with learning.

The target group for the project includes:

Young offenders, young people suffering from problems such as drugs and crime, young people suffering from exclusion from education, young people who are unemployed, young people with numeracy or literacy problems and young people suffering from, or in danger of social exclusion.

Facts and Figures

This project has received £75,859 of European Social Funding via the Learning and Skills Council co-financing programme. The project is due to run until December 2004.

Successes and Achievements

As part of the Learn2Earn project the enterprising youngsters have set up a market stall near the Elephant and Castle where they sell their wares.

Kelly "As part of my Learn2Earn course I sold jewellery and clothes that I had made myself. Doing Learn2Earn has really changed my outlook. I can get on with people much better now. I'm a lot more confident. I know more what I want out of life. Whatever happens all the skills I've learned, like negotiating, researching and dealing with people, mean that I am much more likely to get a job."

Lessons Learnt

Kelly, 17 - "It was a tough course. When we went to the wholesaler's for the first time; they just wrote us off. I think they saw a group of teenagers and thought that we were just mucking about or were there to cause trouble. But the second time we went we were dressed much better and were prepared for the reaction that we might get. When the wholesalers could see that we were taking it seriously then their attitude changed to us as well."

Experiences on Cross Cutting Themes

Equal opportunities plays a pivotal role in the way Fairbridge operates, the organisation is committed to ensuring all staff receive training on implementing this and managing diversity. EO plays a big part in the recruitment of their staff. The project provides an inclusive approach to equipping young people with the skills they need to reach their full potential and meet the opportunities and responsibilities of today's society.

Fairbridge has been awarded the Investors in People Standard, which demonstrates the ethos of the organisation. Fairbridge is also accredited by the Adventurous Activities Licensing Authority for the access adventure away days it holds for the beneficiaries.

The target group have very little or no Information Communication and Technology (ICT) skills and this compounds their barriers to learning and the ability to develop basic and key skills. Therefore, an element of this project is the provision of ICT support for the young people; the beneficiaries enjoy learning about the Internet from which they can progress to designing and building their own web pages.

By reducing social exclusion of this target group Fairbridge will be contributing to the maintenance of steady and high levels of economic growth and employment in the region.

For further information on the above project contact:

Lee Willows at Fairbridge

Tel: 020 7582 9695

E-mail: lee.willows@fairbridge.org.uk

If you are interested in finding out more information about ESF and co-financing please contact Paul Croswell, Head of Development Funding at London Central Learning and Skills Council on 020 7904 0648 or email: paul.crosswell@lsc.gov.uk

If you are interested in European Structural Funds and would like to find out more on ESF or ERDF and the other European Funds visit www.go-london.gov.uk/europeanprogramme or call 020 7217 3527