Neil Almond, founder and chief executive of trend-setting youth charity Kikass, is a firm believer in taking a different approach to working with young people.
An entrepreneur since the age of eight, when he a set up a business buying and selling sheep, Almond founded Kikass with a mission to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the youth sector.
"When I first set Kikass up I wasn't intending to run it for long. The original idea was to spend six months researching and creating a business plan, and then build something we could just hand over to a large charity," Almond explains.
"Large commercial companies have departments dedicated to thinking about how to innovate, how to develop new products and how to get even closer to their markets, but charities rarely have the resources to do the same."
Kikass uses a range of interactive techniques to promote positive messages to young people. The approach grew from Almond's desire to reach a broader cross- section of young people.
While working for a small charity in Norwich, he became curious about how charities could better engage with young people before they hit crisis point.
"Lots of organisations are aimed at people once they're experiencing problems, like attempted suicide or sleeping rough," Almond says. "We wanted to reach young people who weren't accessing youth services."
And that's exactly what the charity did, by using a mix of text messages, street-based stunts and online games promoting messages such as safer sex such as www.supershagland.com.
Almond explains: "There was one point when the government spent £250,000 marketing its safe sex website for Valentine's Day. It got 14,000 unique users, that same month we got 350,000 unique users, with no marketing budget at all."
But despite the success of the youth-friendly techniques that gave Kikass its reputation, the charity has recently undergone a complete overhaul of the way it works.
Almond explains the changes were driven by trends in youth culture: "We noticed that a lot of young people's problems relate to their emotional states, like depression, obesity and lack of confidence."
Although flashy marketing campaigns appealed to benefactors, Almond decided to scrap Kikass' traditional way of working in favour of a new approach, focusing on young people's personal development.
"We believe the market is going towards looking at the psychological issues that underpin social issues," he says. "Teen pregnancy, alcohol use, debt; an awful lot of these issues come down to psychological challenges like self-esteem, self-efficacy and confidence."
That's where the charity's neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) training for young people comes in.
NLP is a form of applied psychology that teaches people how the brain works. Almond says: "Young people seem to get NLP and like it because it's positively focused on the future. We ask them 'what do you want in your life?' and look at how to go about getting that."
The vision for the future is to create a network, where young people learn skills they use in turn to help their peers and members of the wider community.
Kikass already trains youth workers, but is keen to expand by delivering NLP training to professionals, in partnership with The National Youth Agency.
Almond is enthusiastic about the possibilities that lie ahead. "If you tackle people's personal issues before they get out of hand, then you can collapse a whole host of social issues," he says. "Someone who is happy and knows where they are going is far more likely to succeed in life."
BACKGROUND CAREER HISTORY
- Almond worked as regional manager for mobile data firm Continental Europe before launching Kikass in 1999
- He was a fellow of the School of Social Entrepreneurs in 2001 and continues to work there as a tutor
- He has an MA in coaching and mentoring from the University of Wolverhampton, is a certified NLP trainer and a certified fire-walking instructor
- www.kikass.tv.
