Do you want to help young people to make a difference?

Envision is a youth empowerment charity enabling young people to build confidence, aspirations and skills – inspiring the next generation of young community leaders.

Set up in 2000 by four young people the youth-led programmes runs with 110 schools and college partners, and with community groups across England and satellite locations in Cardiff, Essex, Oxford and Walsall. It supports 1500 young people annually to lead changes to issues they are concerned about in their local or global communities. It augments and works across four policy areas; citizenship, empowerment, sustainability, and youth volunteering.

The empowerment programmes are high quality and annually over 90% of beneficiaries report improved confidence, awareness of social and environmental issues, employability skills and (crucially) the desire & ability to continue making a difference in the community around them.

Envision works with young people from diverse backgrounds. 70% of beneficiaries are from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups. 70% have never volunteered before and 50% are from low income families.

Since 2001 Envision has invested £1.5 million into this programme. Over the next four years this investment will double as Envision builds the programme across England between 2009-2012.

This will be part-funded by a successful bid to the Big Lottery Fund. Envision will also expand the number of income-generating services offered to businesses, local government, central government, schools and third sector organisations.

By 2012 Envision aims to increase support from companies, individuals and community fundraisers to gain 40% of its funding from unrestricted sources and enterprise activities compared to the current 15%. The remaining 60% will come from trusts and other grant-makers.

Consolidating its programmes and diversifying its funding in this way will make Envision’s work more sustainable. The organisation will have more security and flexibility to pilot additional youth programmes.

A core network of Envision “Grads” – past participants of the programme - will play an active role through our advisory panel and board of trustees in holding the organisation to account and upholding youth-led values throughout the organisation’s expansion.

Drawing young people from a pool of 9 000 Grads, this alumni programme will grow over the next four years both as a national youth voice movement, and as a force for change on the ground.

Envision has a unique staff culture which respects the opinions of all our staff regardless of position held in the organisation and involves everyone, including beneficiaries, in the strategy setting of the organization. The success of the Envision programme is owed directly to this staff culture, their fresh contributions and the successful internship programme which has been running since 2005.

Our Vision-

Vision:
Our core vision is to see young people empowered to take responsibility for issues around them and demonstrate leadership in their communities.

Mission:
• To empower young people to realise their capacity to make a difference.
• To build confidence, aspiration and skills necessary for affecting social and environmental change.

Values:
• Authentic Opportunities: Meaningful opportunities.
• Experiential Learning & Skills Building: Learning by doing.
• Youth-Leadership: individuals and groups advocating “making a difference”- the ripple effect.
• Youth-Voice: valuable youth opinions and ideas have a platform from which to be heard.
• Ethical living: Envision is an advocate for sustainable development and social justice

Programmes and Activities-

Envision the idea is now a fully functioning charity with offices in Birmingham and London and 19 staff members. Envision has grown from working with only 50 young people, to working with a minimum of 1,500 young people in 110 schools and college partners each year empowering them to realise their capacity to make a difference.

Meeting a need to offer structured extracurricular opportunities to young people aged 16-19 years, Envision continues to work in inner city areas, where there are high levels of disadvantage and low social mobility – for example the Aston ward of Birmingham and the Camberwell ward of southeast London. This need is highlighted by New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) and national volunteering charity v. The model is a simple and effective one, principally because of the example it sets for young people, whatever their backgrounds.

Envision was successful in its bid to Big Lottery’s Young People’s Fund 2 National (YPF2) to expand this flagship programme to three additional cities in England in need of more youth opportunities. Envision is seeking 15% corporate matchfunding to unlock the lottery funding.

Envision will open one new office each year in three new cities starting in Leeds in 2009.

The flagship programme supports teams of 16-19 year olds to come up with their own vision and implement their own positive activities for their communities. Through making a positive, observable difference, young participants realise their abilities and become empowered to be beacons in the community.

Each of the 110 teams attends around 24 meetings between September and May – the majority of which are facilitated by Envision’s adult volunteers, maximising their exposure to supportive individuals from the community, and maximising adult volunteers’ exposure to young people with great potential. This also minimises Envision’s staff costs.

We currently have 180 active adult volunteers supporting teams in schools and colleges across Birmingham and London. These are employed, unemployed, studying or retired individuals, who volunteer two hours once a week to support a group of young people local to them.

All the young people in each node come together four times a year to share ideas, network, get the envision buzz and to make a positive difference together. These large-scale events bring about community cohesion for hugely diverse cities. An event in Trafalgar Square, for instance, involved 300 teenagers leading a campaign for Make Poverty History. The hundreds of pledges they collected from passers’ by were presented to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair.

How Does it Make A Difference?
All projects are all youth-identified and youth-delivered. Young people make a difference in:
youth crime
homelessness
climate change
bullying
gang culture
recycling
poverty
peer education
sustainable development
international development… and much more!


Envision Services
To capacity-build organisations to support youth citizenship Envision delivers a portfolio of educational consultancy training to teachers at PGCE and Certificate Citizenship, training them on how to engage and work with young people in active citizenship sessions. We also deliver youth engagement techniques training to third sector organisations and public sector organizations seeking to engage young people in direct youth work or in youth-involvement/decision-making processes, helping to make their services more youth-friendly and youth-relevant.

These services are also being run for businesses and government bodies and will help Envision to raising 40% of its total income by 2012 from unrestricted sources.