The Big Lottery Fund has today announced the successful bidders to the £108m Talent Match programme, which will support 21 partnerships of charities, councils and employers to address the problem of youth unemployment.
Four of the partnerships – based in the Black Country, Sheffield, Greater Manchester, and London - will be funded to the tune of at least £9.5m.
The partnership led by Wolverhampton Voluntary Sector Council will receive the biggest grant, at £10.27m.
London Youth is the second-biggest recipient, awarded £9.94m over the next five years. Talent Match London will be delivered by a range of partners including Community Links, Collage Arts, Hackney CVS, Gingerbread, the Prince’s Trust and 3SC.
London Youth cited a recent study by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion which suggests that 35,000 young people aged 18-24 are completely outside of the work, training and benefits system, and that over 30 per cent of them have some form of disability.
London Youth’s chief executive Rosie Ferguson (pictured) said Talent Match would offer personalised one-to-one support to all young people on the programme in a bid to help them secure meaningful and sustainable jobs.
According to BIG, Talent Match projects are led by a cross-sector partnership with a key focus on employers, particularly from the private sector, to ensure that local needs are catered for.
Nat Sloane, England chair of BIG, said: “Talent Match promises to help the very hardest-to-reach young people to make the most of their skills and ambitions, not just as an end goal, but by giving them a say in how the programme itself is designed and put into practice.”
The full list of lead partner recipients, the areas they will serve, and the amounts awarded are as follows:
- Wolverhampton Voluntary Sector Council, Black Country, £10,270,938
- London Youth, London, £9,944,800
- Sheffield Futures, Sheffield, £9,898,497
- Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation, Greater Manchester, £9,554,906
- The Wise Group, North East, £8,700,000
- Birmingham Voluntary Service Council, Birmingham and Solihull, £7,550,000
- Your Consortium, Leeds, £6,904,297
- The Prince’s Trust, South East, £6,812,260
- Merseyside Youth Association, Liverpool City, £6,599,958
- Greater Nottingham Groundwork Trust, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, £6,150,000
- Humber Learning Consortium, The Humber, £5,232,809
- CSWP – The Careers Guidance Company, Coventry, Bedworth, Bedworth and North Warwickshire, £3,187,605
- The Prince’s Trust, Anglia, £2,534,975
- The Prince’s Trust, Leicestershire, £2,484,710
- Herefordshire Voluntary Organisations Support Service, The Marches, £1,816,501
- Enable, Northamptonshire, £1,794,818
- Real Ideas Organisation Community Interest Company, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, £1,728,085
- The Shaw Trust, Worcestershire, £1,500,000
- The Prince’s Trust, Middlesbrough, £1,481,349
- The Prince’s Trust, Lincolnshire, £1,130,446
- Lichfield VCS, Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, £978,419
