Bradford Project Developing Young People

Bradford Youth Development Partnership promote the benefit of young people aged 8 to 30 years within the Bradford Area.

Through a wide range of GiveBradford funding, they have been able to support their beneficiaries throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

• Can you describe your organisation and the people / communities you support?

We are a registered charity, and support young people aged 8 to 30 years within the Bradford Area in a variety if ways, including managing youth initiatives to enhance the development of young people and establishing projects which enable the citizens of the area to gain a greater understanding of the needs of young people.

 

• How have you been supported by GiveBradford and what has this funding enabled you to do? 

GiveBradford funding has enabled us to deliver holiday activities over a number of years. When the lockdown started last year, we received £5,000 to provide activities and food to Free School Meals and In Need families.

We were also, supported through the Resilience Fund in August 2020. This was un-restricted grant support allowing BYDP to fund some of the hours of the Development Manager to ensure oversight of the organisation, day-to-day admin and management, fundraising, partnership development and support to smaller community organisations in the area as well as contributing towards the running costs of BYDP.

The funding helped us to focus on the delivery of food parcels and physical activities during a time of lockdown and greatest need, due to loss of employment, increase in food poverty, lack of physical exercise and isolation with the “Stay at Home” message.

 

• Can you give us an example of an individual and or group and how they have responded to this work?

Some of the feedback received from families who received the Food Parcels included:

“We are very happy and grateful, it helped a lot”;

“The support meant I could pay my bills without worrying about putting food on the table”;

“The support helped put food on the table when living on bread & soup”

 

• What challenges and opportunities do you face as an organisation in the current climate?

Like most VCS organisations, the Pandemic has also had an impact on our organisation.  We had to “Pause” some of our direct delivery work with Schools and young people; “Furlough / Part-Furlough” some of our staff and adapt to the New Environment and all the restrictions that resulted due to Covid-19.

We had to learn and re-learn new ways of working and engaging communities and young people (Who had heard of Zoom and MS Teams before the Pandemic!).

We also delivered Covid Home Test Kits, provided Insight information and gathered other intelligence about mis-information, rumours and challenged these where we could about the Pandemic, Test & Trace and more recently the Vaccine roll out and take-up, particularly amongst the BME communities and young people.

Inspite of the many challenges posed by the Pandemic /Covid-19, there have also been opportunities. These have presented themselves as either new funding streams that were easier to apply to, new funding targeted at the BME communities or small charities and flexibility in delivery times, reporting and a simplified application process.

 

• How is your organisation preparing for the future, and what kind of funding is needed?

Our organisation continues to seek further funding to deliver our existing services as well as look at exploring funding for new Projects and also respond through joint work with the Local Authority / Local Voluntary & Community Organisations, e.g. Test & Trace work, Insight Work (Intelligence gathering, myth busting, challenging misinformation about the Pandemic / Vaccine, etc.).

We have opportunities to raise additional funds during the current year, especially in tackling youth unemployment and mental health issues, particularly amongst young people and developing a more collaborative working with other smaller charities / VCS organisations in Bradford.

We have shown that we are a flexible organisation, able to adapt to an ever-changing working environment and deliver good quality services under challenging circumstances and think out of the box. We have been operating since 1999 and hope to go on delivering services to the local communities for many more years to come!