“We are delighted that Kavli Trust has chosen to back our work once again. Thanks to their support, The Key will be able to help almost 450 young people facing challenging circumstances in the North East to believe in themselves and achieve their full potential,” Hannah Underwood says, CEO of The Key.
The new funding from Kavli Trust of NOK 500,000 for the next three years, follows a three year funding period from 2017-2019, which supported The Key with 1.5 million NOK.
The Key Framework is a youth led skills development programme where young people come together to dream up, plan, pitch and deliver their own projects with the help of trained facilitators. Throughout the programme they acquire 12 key skills. The topics of their projects span from sports, leisure and arts, to enterprise, community and the environment.
Pakora Party
Three refugee siblings are behind one of the successful Key projects, the Pakora Party. Whilst settling into their new community, the siblings decided they wanted to plan a project that would help young women in similar situations as themselves by celebrating and sharing their culture with others.
Drawing upon their passion for cooking, they developed a project idea, budget and plan to set up their own enterprise selling and delivering home cooked pakoras.
They negotiated with suppliers and contacted local businesses to sell their produce.
”The Key meant I am capable of being independent and I’ve got capacity of doing my own unique things and being successful, Mahnoor said, one of the sisters who took the project lead and later volunteered with The Key to help others develop their projects. She was awarded ‘Volunteer of The Year’ at The Key Awards in 2019 and was subsequently nominated for ‘Volunteer of the Year’ at the North East Charity Awards.
Read more: New opportunities for young people facing challenging circumstances
Mahnoor Monsoor and Hamza Monsoor from Pakora Party. Photo: Pakora Party
Overachieving
Over the past three years, a grant from Kavli Trust has enabled 1,324 disadvantaged and vulnerable young people to complete 315 of their own Key project ideas.
As a result, The Key supported young people to improve their self-confidence and self-esteem and develop their skills by an average of 24 percent. The projects carried out by these young people also had the added bonus of benefiting 5,098 members of their community.
“The Key has overachieved on all their goals! We are so impressed with how they manage to provide young people with the tools and inspiration to believe in themselves and carry out a wide range of fun and interesting projects, that benefit not only the participants, but the community as a whole. We are looking forward to seeing what the next years will bring,” says Inger Elise Iversen, general manager at Kavli Trust.
Flourish in doing whatever they choose
Since 1992, The Key Framework has been empowering young people by providing them with the opportunity to develop a set of 12 Key personal, relationship and task orientated skills that cover everything from learning how to work in a team to decision-making and problem solving.
Each individual skill is designed to benefit young people as they progress through education and training into adult life and employment.
“Whether it’s learning how to manage a budget, dealing with a difficult situation or just coming out of their comfort zone, the experience we give them is designed to inspire them to flourish and thrive in whatever they choose to do,” Hannah Underwood says.
Top photo: Young people attending The Key framework activities. Photo: The Key