This quote comes from the government’s recent Positive for Youth statement and we couldn’t agree with it more. The role of the business sector is crucial in contributing to a strong youth offer. Businesses can and do offer young people opportunities to develop skills for employment. Through this, relationships can be built between potential employers and employees, bring money into the public and voluntary sector and help increase the size of the potential future workforce.
We can say this with confidence as our recent research supports it. We hope that this research will inform the government’s new business brokerage initiative – led by Business in the Community, which is working to develop a model for brokering relationships with the private sector – as well as help us in our work with corporate sector organisations to lever money into the sector. Our research, funded by the LGA, will also support us in our work with councils to help them develop effective models to commission, fund and support youth work locally.
There is overwhelming evidence that the business sector wants to support young people. A cynic would perhaps think "well yes because they want to sell more widgets". But that is not fair. Of course there is a business rationale behind a corporate strategy but it goes much further than that. For most it’s as much a case of ensuring that staff morale remains high, and that employees have a chance to give something back as it is to simply increasing the bottom line. While it may be a frightening world out there, it is really encouraging to see businesses, the government, local authorities and the youth sector working together to find solutions.
Alex Stutz, head of policy, National Youth Agency
