One Southwark April Newsletter

Dear Community Partners,

PROGRAMME UPDATE

April marks one year of delivery for the One Southwark Programme, and what a year it has been. Thanks to your backing we have been able to provide meaningful support to our cohort of 21 young people.

Here are some highlights from the programme this year in numbers:

140 organisations and individuals signed to our Asset network (collection of supporters)

20 Skills development sessions facilitated to support young people with their personal development

50 Circle of support connections facilitated, to support young people with their progression/development

5 young people supported to make EET (Education, Employment or Training) transition

5 Young people currently being trained as young researchers

4 Enterprise projects supported to transition from idea stage to testing

3 ADHD assessments paid for

1 individual £10k grant secured by young person to pilot their Enterprise project.

YOUTH VOICE

We want to bring young people and local institutions together, to learn from each other and find new and innovative ways to remove barriers for young people from underrepresented communities.

Check out this great blog written by one of our programme members, in partnership with our learning partner, IVAR, as part of the #Iwill2022 campaign (November 2022)

Supporting Young people in place: A story of Youth Action in Southwark

What do you love about Southwark and what is difficult for you/other young people living in Southwark?

I love that Southwark has abundant opportunities for young people to get involved in – programmes like One Southwark, Southwark Youth Parliament, Southwark Young Advisors, and more. As a young person, I also love having access to discounted leisure facilities and Southwark Free Gym and Swim – this impressive scheme gives residents the means to care for their physical wellbeing. That said, living in Southwark can have its challenges. One of them is that despite the opportunities provided by Southwark council and various organisations, knowing where to find them can be challenging. It would be ideal if a community platform held all this information, particularly services that help people with their health and wellbeing.

What would you like to change for young people/communities living in Southwark and how would you create?

I’m a medical student that’s passionate about health promotion, health equity and health policy. There are many preventable deaths each year, which means that had there been more effective public health interventions, many people may not have died. I would like us to support the community improve their knowledge of what makes good health and wellbeing and, how to live healthier lifestyles. How would I do this? Building my community project, Nurtured: a public health initiative that champions disease prevention through health promotion. I plan to use social media to provide information about a range of health topics, collaborate with other organisations promoting health and wellbeing, conduct research, and provide culturally competent workshops in the community. This would ensure we are, protecting, promoting, and maintaining health and wellbeing for our community to prevent disease, disability and death (aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3). I hope that by taking part, people from different backgrounds will benefit and feel more empowered to nurture their health and wellbeing.

How is One Southwark helping you have an effect on your community?

I’m so excited about the networks I can now access. The One Southwark Programme Director frequently introduces me to a wide range of knowledgeable people with expertise in delivering successful community projects whom I can learn from and apply their insights to my project. The Programme Director, who is more like a mentor to me now, guides me to resources that help build my leadership, communication, project management, research skills and more. I can share and bounce ideas with him, and we set tasks with deadlines which helps to motivate me. One Southwark has also provided me with funding to develop and launch my project. One Southwark is helping me develop me as an individual and bring my community project to life.

COMMUNITY PARTNERS

We have been blown away by the level of generosity and support we’ve received from the Southwark community. Our Asset Network (collection of community partners) is currently comprised of 140 individuals from a variety of organisations, who have either provided direct support to the programme or are committed to doing so in the future. The Network has allowed our young people to have access to opportunities so many take for granted. Working with the network to create our positive ‘Circles of Support’ has enabled the young people to benefit from work experience, mentoring, skills development workshops, education or career pathway support and financial contributions.

Despite the many successes this year there is still a lot of work to do. We are always looking for individuals or organisations who are willing to give their time, resources, connections and more to help us ‘Level the playing field for young people from underrepresented communities, through collective action’.

SOUTHWARK STARS

We are so grateful for all the support we have received from our community partners, but it would be remiss of us to not give a special shout out to our ‘Southwark Stars’. These are the individuals or organisations that have gone above and beyond in their support of the programme:

• Rich Carpenter
• Hannah Lemon
• Sophie Hadjikyriacos (Hudson Fuggle)
• Rubel Ahmed & Oliur Rahman (Active Communities Network)
• Suzanne Ryan (Montagu Private Equity)
• Alastair Smith (Advent Capital Management)
• Lauren Miller & Victoria Heard (Bright Smith)
• Serena De Biase & Jasmine Awad (Mercato Metropolitan)
• Daniel Morris (TSIP)
• Susanna Sek (Hatch)
• Chique Narwan (Enzyme)
• Russell Dryden (Blue Bermondsey)
• Godwin Deveer (Step Now)
• Anna Dewey & Kenneth Cruz (Keegans)
• Eleanor Cammegh (Kooth)

IVAR UPDATE

IVAR is the learning partner for One Southwark. We’re supporting the programme explore the barriers to young peoples’ progression and the changes needed to create more opportunities for underrepresented young people across the borough.

Over the last year One Southwark has been brokering connections for young people – work experience, mentoring, information, connections to industry professionals – and young people have been able to seek advice, gain new skills and build their confidence. It felt right then for IVAR to design some field work which could have One Southwark’s participants at the heart, where we could benefit from their insights and experiences and in return, we could provide some social research methods training and mentoring.

We’re now in the midst of this fieldwork and we’ve been supporting our team of five One Southwark researchers conduct interviews with members of the network – that’s individuals/organisations who are providing some kind of support to young people or the programme. We’re hoping to build our understanding of the motivations, opportunities, barriers and needs of these supporters, so the programme can learn and adapt accordingly.

Other research activities include mapping what change could look like (Theory of Change/learning and evaluation framework), a focus group with young people and a survey of network members. At the end of April, we’ll get together to look at what insights are emerging from this fieldwork and we’ll be convening our annual learning workshop in July with young people, the delivery team and the Coalition to review the findings.

– Houda Davis, Senior Researcher at IVAR

OUR COALITION

One Southwark is currently being managed by United St Saviour’s charity but is driven by an impressive collection of community stakeholders who believe the status quo can be challenged and that Southwark can be a fairer place.

The Coalition has been at the forefront of strategically developing the programme, directly supporting the young people and being examples of positive change.

‘As the Chair of One Southwark, I am honoured to be a part of a programme that is working to create systemic change for underrepresented young people in our community. Our mission is to break down barriers and enable circles of support that empower young people with the tools they need to succeed in life. We believe that everyone deserves equal opportunities, regardless of their background or circumstances. We are committed to building strong relationships between young people and local institutions, and challenging existing practices that hold them back. We are working tirelessly to create a future where every young person in Southwark has access to meaningful opportunities, positive support networks, and essential resources. Through our collaborative efforts, we are making tangible progress towards our goal. We believe that by working together, we can create a brighter future for all. I am proud to support One Southwark and excited about the impact that we will continue to make in our community.’

– Ashley Richardson, Chair of One Southwark Coalition (Peabody)

SUPPORT LIST

Each quarter we collate a list of requests / needs from our young people. If you would like to be part of this call out or can support in any way please get in touch.

 We currently need your support to facilitate the following for our young people:

• 3-5 day work experience at an animation studio
• Part-time paid employment opportunities (retail preferrable)
• Business development mentoring in Fashion Industry
• Business development mentoring in finance / branding / start-ups
• Access to paid film production opportunities
• Mentoring in Film production
• Tuition support to complete a quantitative research dissertation. Preferably an individual who has knowledge on statistical analysis with SPSS. This includes, finding, cleaning and analysing data
• Funding to produce short films

FINAL WORD

It’s been a privilege to work on this first year of the One Southwark programme, bringing community partners and young people together to make meaningful change. As somebody who grew up in Southwark and was invested in by community leaders, it gives me great pride to be able to invest in our young people today and, with the help and support of our Coalition & Asset Network, begin to Level the Playing field for young people.

– Will Cole, Programme Director of One Southwark