Funding to improve employment support for GRT young people

The funding, taken from the Foundation’s £1.73m Infrastructure Resilience Fund, will be split between the Traveller Movement and YMCA George Williams College.

It comes following research by the Traveller Movement which examined the extent to which systemic racism in the classroom, the youth sector, and the workplace significantly hinders economic inclusion for young GRT people.

• Support for GRT young people

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The organisation will use the funding to “bring together public and private youth sectors, employers, and the GRT charitable sector to build pathways to employment for young people” through its Reaching Out project.

YMCA George Williams College plans to use its infrastructure funding to review existing data collection practice and offer insight into how opportunities for young people from the GRT communities can be developed.

Yvonne MacNamara, chief executive of the Traveller Movement, said: “This is important work; young people from all sorts of backgrounds are being disadvantaged by a lack of access to opportunities and an increasingly precarious and casualised labour market, but the situation is even more stark for young GRTs who are amongst the most marginalised and discriminated against groups in society. 

“We're very grateful for Youth Futures Foundations' support for this initiative, which will help us to deliver on the recommendations from our peer-led research project."

Bethia McNeil, chief executive of YMCA George Williams College, added: “Through funding from Youth Futures Foundation, we will be able to gain new collective insight into which groups of young people are being reached by and benefiting from provision, with improved collection, monitoring, and demographic data analysis.

“There is an increasingly diverse cohort of young people across the country, many of whom face deep, ingrained structural inequity in their lives. Youth organisations we work with have shared challenges in understanding who they engage and how, in ways that are meaningful to young people, and in a legal, ethical, and co-created way. This project will work with practitioners and young people themselves to scope current data collection practice, develop new shared approaches and support more equitable outcomes for young people.”