The North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA) recently celebrated the success of the Youth Employment Partnership Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) small grants programme at an event in Newcastle.
Through the VCSE programme 10 organisations across the North of Tyne area were funded to deliver targeted activities to support young people experiencing worklessness and who were not currently accessing mainstream employment provision.
The projects delivered across Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland and aimed to understand and remove barriers to employment and build skills for a diverse range of career paths to support young people’s individual ambitions.
Speaking about the success of the programme elected Metro Mayor Jamie Driscoll said: “Anyone who thinks they’re too small to make a difference has clearly never met a mosquito.
“But when you have a problem as big as youth unemployment there’s a temptation to come up with a big one size fits all solution.
“Except we know that in the real world people come in all different sizes and shapes. And very different, complex needs. So we’re not looking for one simple solution. I say let a thousand flowers bloom.
“That’s why we have a small grants programme. To see what works for different people.”
A celebration event, hosted with partner Rocket Science, was held at The Core on 6 July 2023 and was an opportunity to celebrate the hard work undertaken by the 10 delivery partners and a chance to congratulate some of the over 600 young people who participated in the programme on their success.