Our vision:
To inspire a generation of young leaders in our communities, and influence positive changes to our community and ourselves. Providing the young people with a safe and fun learning space.
In order to make this happen, we reach out to as many young people and encourage them to take part in various youth orientated and youth-led activities such as: Movie nights, Music making, awareness-raising workshops, information and advice on youth-related issues, referrals and skills training workshops.
Through these activities, we have attracted over 90 young people. From among the participants of our activities, we get a good number of young people who would seek other support and express interest in becoming leaders. They are the ones who access our leadership skills training programme. We deliver skills training in neighbourhood project management, budget preparation, fundraising, partnership work, motivational and confidence building.
The members of our Management Committee are those who have successfully completed some of our leadership training courses and are now training on the job as they manage the whole organisation and its projects.
Our success in a span of one year has brought us to the attention of agencies working with young people, one of which is Poplar HARCA who also facilitated us making a presentation about our model of working with young people, at DCLG conference in Westminster, and being acknowledged by Hazel Blears in her speech on the same day. ASB practitioner’s forum in Scotland Yard, and further presentations for different housing associations: Hackney Homes, PoplarHarca, and the Housing Corporation’s Gold award conference in Manchester.
This has encouraged us to explore the possibility of setting ourselves up as a social enterprise, becoming a centre of excellence for youth leadership. As an enterprise, we will seek to disseminate our model to other organisations involved in youth work and are looking at successful ways of working with young people. We will also work towards being able to assist/support and train young people to set up their own social enterprise to ensure that young people maximise the opportunities the regeneration of the area will bring.
Poplar has one of the largest youth populations in Tower Hamlets, with a large proportion from diverse backgrounds. It is at the heart of many of the future regeneration plans especially with the Olympic village within walking distance. LiC wants to address the lack of skills among young people in Poplar. It is quite urgent that young people get involved in maximising the potential of the area, by making sure that more young adults are part of the reshaping of Poplar and are introduced to the benefits that the business and regeneration world can have on their life as well as their families.
We want to establish a strong youth voice in our neighbourhoods by developing innovative and sustainable projects for our peers enabling them to have skills and confidence to become young leaders. In order to make this happen, we reach out to as many young people and encourage them to take part in various youth orientated and youth-led activities.
