London citizenship project gets rollout
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The Citizenship Foundation is looking to roll out its Youth Act programme across the UK.
Youth Act has been running in London for five years and works with young people in a number of settings including schools and faith-based youth groups.
Ade Sofola, director of Youth Act, said the aim was to empower young people and get them interested in creating solutions to local problems in a political way.
"If there's a problem with homelessness, one solution would be for young people to buy food, or give money," she said. "But our methodology would be for young people to find out who has the housing budget and try and persuade them to change the way they spend money or to increase the budget."
Youth Act is now being used in 15 local authority areas across the country but the Citizenship Foundation is eager to roll it out wider than that.
"We believe that if we want to strengthen the community and build a cohesive society we have to engage with young people," Sofola said.
- www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk.
