Innovation Fund Feedback from our friend Sana at An-Nisa Community Empowerment.

An-Nisa Community Empowerment was awarded the Innovation Fund to work with Local Schools and Youth Centres in delivering weekly mentoring sessions designed to empower young vulnerable males who could be going through difficulty in their lives resulting in their challenging behaviours that lead to exclusions.

The project had to make significant changes to the way that it operated due to the unprecedented impact Covid-19 outbreak and lockdown. Sana said that they adapted quickly and set about delivering online fitness sessions, online mentoring, Covid-19 workshops and engaging with the youth who were out in parks, estates and community spaces. They also delivered outreach in areas known to suffer with Anti-social behaviour, working to empower the youths with facts and tools to keep themselves and their families safe.

Sana stated that through their outreach interventions, they were able to engage with youths and provided PPE to youths at a time when the shops were selling them at extortionate prices and were extremely hard to get hold of. They found during their engagement with the youth that unfortunately, most of them were unaware that they could carry the virus as they seemed to think they could not catch it. They were completely unaware they could pass it on to their grandparents or vulnerable members of their family.

Sana said that they were able to identify two youths who were experiencing mental health issues and needed referrals, which they were able to do so quite quickly through their contacts with the RBKC Detached outreach team.

Anti-Social behaviour is a problem and Sana noticed that it went up during Covid-19 due to the closures of youth centres and youth provider services. Sana informed me that they were able to work with Parks Police and the Detached Outreach team to lower this by delivering sessions in parks and reminding the youths to stay out of the play areas which were closed off.

In total the project supported 29 youths delivering online fitness sessions, outreach interventions and 1-2-1 mentoring.

Sana fed back: “The project was very successful and we were able to deliver the project to vulnerable youth with mentoring to reduce exclusions, provide physical activity, workshops educating not only on planned discussions of bullying, respect, and anger management techniques, but also added in COVID-19 awareness and risks.”

Sana fed back: “We are pleased with the outcomes and plan to apply for another pot of funding to continue to support those most vulnerable”.