1.8 Million Pounds Youth Social Action Project to reach Thousands of Disadvantaged Young People

JLGB are thrilled to be able to expand its evolve youth volunteering & skills initiative, thanks to the #iwill Fund. This three year, £1.8million project, will help remove faith barriers to participation to youth social action, enabling JLGB to fulfil its pledge to empower 15,000 disadvantaged young people to take part meaningful and impactful volunteering opportunities and skills development programmes.

The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £40 million joint investment from the Big Lottery Fund, using National Lottery funding, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities.

Created in 2014, thanks to funding from the Wohl Foundation, evolve is a revolutionary, community-wide collective impact project that brings together young people, and key stakeholders (including parents, teachers, charities, faith leaders, national award bodies), driven by a state-of-the-art digital platform that provides training and social action opportunities, awards and qualifications in a fully trusted faith and culturally sensitive way.

evolve enables and equips young people to build their character by fully engaging them in meaningful social action to become active citizens in their community and enhance their employability and transferable skills. The building of both assets and character is uniquely tracked through the evolve platform, logging their progress and achievements in one place, forming a ‘digital passport’ that can be carried forward and used in later life, enhancing their future aspirations, employability potential and social mobility.

The project focusses on youth social action programmes for those aged 14 and under and will upgrade the evolve age-progressive social action journey specifically designed to reach young people from faith and minority backgrounds, whom without JLGB would not engage in everyday achievement awards wider society takes for granted, such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. This project will also see the creation of a new Primary School Social Action Award, aimed at children in school years 5 - 6 and will become the first step on the evolve volunteering journey.

Although originally created by JLGB to meet the faith requirements of Jewish young people, all evolve awards and programmes are open to all and thanks to this expansion over the next three years, evolve will be shared and replicated to support other communities irrespective of religious belief.

This major expansion of evolve will kick-start on 23^rd January at an interactive workshop on harnessing the power of youth volunteering, funded by one of JLGB’s match fund partners Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG). The event will bring together over 150 delegates from charities, schools, youth and faith groups to help enable and empower the next generation of young volunteers.

Sarah Benioff, England Director at Big Lottery Fund, said:

“This new partnership with JLGB gives us a huge opportunity to support young people to develop their skills and confidence. Through social action the #iwill Fund will be an important tool to empower young people and open up volunteering opportunities. In turn, these skills will benefit their local community and people of all ages. We look forward to seeing the impact this project will have.”

The Lord Levy, JLGB President said:

“There are many barriers and challenges facing young people from faith and cultural communities for them to be able to access youth social action provisions. JLGB helps to removes these barriers, enabling and empowering young people to give back and fully participate in all that British society has to offer. The #iwill Fund is a game-changer for our community and this together with the expansion of the evolve initiative, will ensure that thousands of young Jewish people can now take part in high quality, meaningful and impactful volunteering and skills opportunities.”

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said:

“For almost 125 years, the JLGB has led the way in youth social action for the Jewish community. The expansion of JLGB’s evolve initiative, thanks to the #iwill Fund, will enable the next generation to do the most important mitzvah (good deed) of all - to help and give back to others, in ways that also meet the modern and technological needs of today’s Jewish youth.”

Charlotte Hill, CEO of Step Up To Serve, the organisation that coordinates the #iwill campaign said:

“JLGB have supported the #iwill campaign since our launch and it’s great that they have been awarded match funding from the #iwill fund to expand their evolve young volunteering and skills initiative to reach thousands more young people from faith communities with fully accessible youth social action programmes and achievement awards.”

In addition to this Big Lottery #iwill announcement, you can read more about JLGB’s Youth United funding here and to read more about our Genesis Philanthropy Group funding here.

Further information:

#iwill Fund

• The Government (DCMS) and Big Lottery Fund have each invested £20 million in to the #iwill Fund which will help to transform the culture of community engagement by getting young people involved in greater social action opportunities.
• Over four years the fund will be developed through investment and match funding from Trusts and Foundations, businesses and philanthropists
• This innovative fund, bringing together a coalition of investors, aims to create the conditions to embed meaningful social action into the lives of every young person.

#iwill campaign

• The #iwill campaign is a collective effort involving over 800 partners from across the public, voluntary, education and business sectors with a vision to make meaningful social action part of life for 10- to 20-year olds by the year 2020, wherever they live and whatever their background.
• The #iwill campaign was launched in 2013 with cross-party and cross-sector support after research into how the business, education, public and voluntary sectors could support young people to engage in social action. The campaign is coordinated by Step Up To Serve, a charity registered in England & Wales (no. 1154588).
• HRH The Prince of Wales is Patron of Step Up To Serve and the #iwill campaign. For more information, visit www.iwill.org.uk and follow @iwill_campaign

Big Lottery Fund

• We are the largest community funder in the UK – we’re proud to award money raised by National Lottery players to communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Since June 2004, we have made over 200,000 grants and awarded over £9 billion to projects that have benefited millions of people.
• We are passionate about funding great ideas that matter to communities and make a difference to people’s lives. At the heart of everything we do is the belief that when people are in the lead, communities thrive. Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, our funding is open to everyone. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life.

What is the evolve youth volunteering & skills initiative?

evolve is JLGB’s response to the ever-changing needs of young volunteers. For the first time, evolve brings together all key stakeholders from across the society to ensure that social action becomes more accessible and more rewarding for Jewish young people than ever before. evolve creates a coherent, age progressive and streamlined framework for volunteering and accredited training that embraces all Jewish young people to enable and equip them to fully engage in meaningful training, volunteering and citizenship throughout their school years and onto student life.

evolve removes barriers by creating a coherent, age-progressive and streamlined framework for volunteering and accredited training that embraces all Jewish young people to enable and equip them to fully engage in meaningful training, volunteering and citizenship throughout their school years and onto student life.

The backbone of evolve is a digital platform that streamlines the way young people can be matched to placements and record their volunteer experience. evolve is unique because it aligns volunteering and social action projects to national awards such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, vinspired, Yoni Jesner Award, Open College Network accreditation, NCS and the creation of a new Primary School Social Action Award, creating an age-progressive journey for young people to fully access the rewards and recognition they deserve.

Through vocational qualifications, transferable skills and an asset-building approach, evolve aims to help young people achieve increased recognition for their contributions, support them to make a positive difference in their community and help them to increase their employment potential and career decision choices. This is key to increased social mobility among young people, in particular those from hard to reach communities that universal services fail to engage.

Who are JLGB?

Today’s JLGB is a modern, thriving and innovative national voluntary youth organisation that is a model of professional youth work in the 21st century. The JLGB is the United Kingdom’s longest serving Jewish youth organisation, bringing together the best of British traditions and Jewish values, and has been a way of life for tens of thousands of young Jewish people for over 123 years.

In the last decade, the JLGB has been awarded or contracted to deliver major projects through trusts and foundations, government grants and contracts. As a leading voluntary youth organisation with the credibility and knowledge to successfully deliver projects, the JLGB has created opportunities for some of society’s hardest to reach young people.

JLGB invite all young people, parents, charities, teachers and community leaders who are not already part of evolve to get involved in this collective impact project.

Create your evolve profile at: www.jlgb.org/evolve.
Email: evolve@jlgb.org Call: 020 8989 5743        

For all press enquiries email: Ellie.Pendred@jlgb.org or call 07804 605162