Best Youth Initiative Scheme

 ProjectScotkland’s ‘Closer to Work’ project has been nominated for an Evening News Award in the Best Youth Initiative Category.

 This Edinburgh-wide project, supported by the financial company State Street, created full-time volunteering opportunities at nine different not-for-profit organisations in the city.

 This is a high impact community wide programme that has brought young people, adult mentors and charities together.  Psrtners providing the opportunities are Museum of Scotland, Grassmarket Community Project, the Scout Association, Dr. Bell’s Family Centre, Muirhouse Youth Development Group, BTCV, harmony House, North Edinburgh Arts and Hunters Hall Housing.

 My Community, My Vision

 Thanks to the support of the Santander Foundation, ProjectScotland has embarked on a year-long programme of participatory photography with young volunteers and mentors in Glasgow.

 My Community, My Vision gives young people a voice.  It allows them to express their own personal learning and development through volunteering and their views on their local community, through photography.

 This challenges people in the community to “look through the eyes of young people” and see their take on their life and the place they live.

 Pass It On

 In conjunction with Glasgow City Council (GCC), ProjectScotland has designed a mentoring programme to develop GCC coaches by introducing them to the complementary skills of mentoring.

 The programme trained the mentors and matched them up with young people volunteering in BTCV, Depot Arts and Wellhouse Community Trust.

 The mentors obtained fresh perspectives and a new level of self-awareness, and got to see their city through the eyes of young volunteers – a very different view from their own.

 The project is still running and mentors continue to learn while they meet and talk to young volunteers

 Aberdeenshire

 We have recently completed a great project in Aberdeenshire for 9 young people.  The range of opportunities was very wide – youth work, gardening, running a fruit mart to working with people with disabilities.

 As with all our opportunities, the aim was to provide quality volunteering experiences, supporting young people in their personal development. Thanks to the support of Apache, Weatherford, AMEC and Aberdeenshire Council we were also able to provide mentoring training for Aberdeenshire Council’s Community Planning Partnership staff and match them up with young people in the project, and employability support for the volunteers.  The employability support comprised  of two sessions for each volunteer, individually tailored to their needs and supporting them in a range of activities such as identifying current skills, writing a CV and designing a pre-employment action plan.

 This has been such a success that we have been asked to run a second project in the area and this will start in August.

ProjectScotland is a registered charity (SCO35464) and is a company limited by guarantee (SCO267476) with its registered office at
20 Hopetoun Street, Edinburgh, EH7 4GH.

To unsubscribe please click here