Community / Youth-led charity scoops £150k funding
A LOCAL youth-led organisation is celebrating after receiving a £150,000 funding boost.
The money for the OPEN project is coming from British Science Association’s Ideas Fund.
It is one of three projects based in the Highlands and Islands to have been awarded a total of £418,000 to continue and extend their work improving the mental wellbeing of their local community over the next three years, alongside researchers who are helping them turn their ideas into reality.
OPEN started as a youth project within Voluntary Action Shetland, led by young people.
It has since been established as an independent youth-led organisation.
The original project focused on creating a new, unique drop-in café for young people in Shetland to act as a safe space to combat isolation and develop connections.
The young people led the project, designing what kind of space they wanted, supported by researchers offering their advice and expertise.
Some of the young people were trained as peer researchers and the organisation now employs one of them to continue to lead their peer research activity, which has become a central part of their work.
Peer research on alcohol and drugs culture among young people provides valuable results
The British Science Association said OPEN is “establishing themselves as leaders within the youth peer research community”.
They added: “Over the next year they propose to focus on examining how they have achieved this and producing materials that can be shared and tested with others.
“They will then seek additional funding from other sources to support further project work to test their approach, using The Ideas Fund investment as match funding. They also aim to embed their approach within Shetland’s local systems to give young people an equal voice at the table on decisions that affect them.”
OPEN project coordinator Una Murray said: “OPEN has experienced transformational change since receiving the funding from The Ideas Fund in 2021.
“OPEN aims to expand its impact, evidence and share learning, adopting a ‘learning by doing’ approach to embed youth voices in the system.”
To date, the Ideas Fund has supported more than 70 projects, totalling around £7 million, with a focus on addressing the systemic challenges that community groups and researchers can face in working together.
The Ideas Fund team will work with all the funded projects to gather feedback into how community group and researcher partnerships work and provide examples of the impact and what becomes possible when these collaborations are supported.
Chris Manion, head of grants at the British Science Association said: “We’re so proud of how the fund has grown and are excited to see how these incredible projects can have an even greater impact.
“With communities taking the lead, The Ideas Fund is demonstrating a new approach to partnering with researchers, and we’re seeing already how this can help make real improvements to people’s wellbeing.
“We’re excited to learn more from supporting these projects over the next three years, along with a number of others across the UK.”
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