“The Key made me feel like my opinions could be heard.” – Ellie, participant The Key Framework
A grant of 1.5 million NOK over three years (2017-2019) from Kavli Trust enabled The Key to inspire belief in many young people facing challenging circumstances across the North East of England.
“We are thrilled to report that we overachieved on all of the goals we set out to achieve”, The Key states in a recent report on the program.
Self-confidence and social skills
The grant from Kavli Trust has provided 1,324 young people facing challenging circumstances from communities in the North East of England, with the opportunities and support they needed to complete The Key’s youth-led skills, skills development programme “The Key Framework”.
Together these young people dreamt up, planned, pitched, delivered and evaluated 315 of their very own project ideas with a variety of different themes including sport, community, enterprise, leisure, arts, environmental and many more.
As a result of them using their creativity and imaginations to dream up and deliver their own projects, young people built their self-confidence and developed 12 important personal and social skills by an average of 24%, according to the report.
Reaching out to young women and girls
One Key Group joined forces when they decided to make a difference by tackling a prevalent issue facing many young women and girls. Annalise, Donna, Lauren, Natasha and Rachel, aged 18-23, came together and began their Key adventure with hopes of tackling Period Poverty. An issue close to their hearts the group felt that with so many young people suffering that it was time for them to stand up and make a change.
The group wanted to think of a creative solution that would help those in real need get access to the sanitary items they needed.
Read more about Project M in this blogpost.
Empowering with pakora
Pakora Party is another example of a successful Key Group project. Mahnoor, Iqra and Hamza are a sibling group who joined forces to form Key Group, Pakora Party, and inspire others with their Key Project. As young asylum seekers, the three siblings had faced many challenges when first settling into the region, one of which included integrating into their new community whilst maintaining the things that made them who they were.
Read more about Pakora Party in this blogpost.
Benefits for the whole community
In addition to those supported directly, a staggering 5,098 members of the community have benefitted from the amazing young people’s projects developed and carried out throughout this funding period.
“We are happy to see that The Key has been able to support so many disadvantaged young people from the North East with the funding from Kavli Trust. It is impressing how The Key manages to provide the young people with the tools and inspiration to believe in themselves and achieve their full potential,” says Inger Elise Iversen, general manager at Kavli trust.
Quotes from participants
“The Key changes the way I think about things. I think about things in a more social action and community based way now.”
– Eve
”The Key helped me gain my confidence and helped me be able to do presentations in front of others.”
– Sina
“I loved doing The Key as I achieved so much that I never realised I could do, and I am so proud of everything our group did to help the community”
– Abi
“The Key changed the way I approached people. I made friends with people more. I got to know people more.”
– Roshin
BACKGROUND
The project originally set out to achieve the following:
Primary goal
• 1,046 young people, aged 11-25 to have engaged in The Key Framework and planned 255 projects throughout a three year funding period.
Sub goals
• Young people have developed the 12 Key skills by an average of 21%
• 354 transitions into education, employment, training or volunteering will be made by the young people engaged.
• 4,080 members of the community will benefit as a direct result of engaging in young people’s projects.
Source: The Key Annual Report: Kavlifondet January 2017 – October 2019
Top photo: Representants from The Key, Kavli Trust and Kavli UK at a project meeting in the UK in 2018.