Ignite Youth is a youth club based in Harrow which provides valuable support and encouragement for young people in the area, especially ones who find themselves in trouble, need help re-engaging with education and finding routes into employment. They also work with young people to move away from anti-social behaviour, gang involvement and exploitative relationships. Ignite runs a programme of one-to-one mentoring, prison pathway support for young people leaving custody, employment support, sports, small group activities and outreach youth work.
When lockdown was announced, Ignite Youth Club was forced to close, but its youth workers continued to deliver ‘detached youth work’ – this was round the clock support from homes across Harrow. John Lyon’s Charity enabled the Youth Club to keep going by awarding an emergency grant via the London Community Response to support this new way of working. Thanks to this vital funding, Ignite Youth was able to deliver a scaled down version of its services ensuring the most vulnerable children and young people were reached and supported.
The funding for detached youth work addressed safeguarding, health and safety and community safety concerns directly related to the pandemic, as well as an online media programme for young people to help cope with the impact of Covid-19 on their lives and their communities. Ignite’s face-to-face activities, which included basketball, boxing and group music sessions, were suspended and transferred to online sessions. The Youth Workers of Ignite Youth are used to mentoring remotely and throughout lockdown they were in direct touch with families and able to help them deal with appalling levels of domestic abuse in the home, recruitment into gangs, the inability to learn online due to lack of home-based computers and laptops and the escalation of new or existing mental health issues.
As this new ‘remote’ outreach continued through 2020, Ignite’s Youth Workers found they were able to develop deeper relationships with young people. With limited distractions, young people started opening up about their lives and families and the Ignite Team was able to help them with strategies for improving their situation.
Ignite Youth is hugely grateful for the emergency funding via the London Community Response and London Funders, which helped maintain their work and develop it in such a positive direction. As life begins to return to normal the young people from Ignite Youth are enjoying face to face activities and in-person services once again.