YAFs (Youth Achievement Foundations)

Not everyone gets on so well at school. Some may find themselves in trouble or even excluded for whatever reason. And that's where Youth Achievement Foundations come in.

Youth Achievement Foundations (YAF) are small independent schools that are run as social enterprises and deliver an informal education curriculum for young people, usually between the ages of 13 and 16 who have been excluded, or are at risk of being excluded, from mainstream schools.

Once young people are excluded from school there still a statutory duty to provide them with education, and this can be done in a variety of ways such as Pupil Referral Units (PRU).

However, YAFs are a third sector social enterprise alternative to PRUs and, in general, get better results. They typically raise attendance levels to around 80-90% and enable the young people to acquire achievements and qualifications. They also cost about two-thirds the price of a PRU.

They focus on, instead of running a series of classes, they work on developing more of a youth work approach and work on finding out what they young people are interested in and base the learning around that.

A YAF was set up in Scunthorpe about seven years ago and since then UK Youth received funding to develop the model and set up ten more whilst keeping them sustainable. They succeeded in doing so and actually have set up twelve YAFs since then.

UK Youth are now looking at rolling out this model in more places throughout the country and myplace centre could be potential venues. YAFs would benefit hugely from places that have a variety of different facilities that the young people could use as educational aids. This could be anything from computer rooms to performance space; having a lack of somewhere to host a YAF is the main barrier. A myplace centre could rent out their building with the assurance they are renting it out to a relevant and worthwhile organization.

Then there is the issue of money. To set up a YAF you need working capital investment of around £150,000, although if you already have a premises this could be less.

The Department for Education has given UK Youth a sum of money to continue their work with YAFs but more is needed and so the myplace Support Team are working with UK Youth to set up an investment fund to increase the amount of working capital.

Anyone wanting to contribute to their local community can put money into a social investment bond knowing that their investment will support community activity. The Support Team is trying to establish this sort of social enterprise bond so that more YAFs can be set up at myplace centres.

The Fuse project in Trafford are already in quite advanced talks with UK Youth about getting a YAF set up at their centre and hopefully others will follow suit. If any other projects are interested in a YAF should contact the myplace Support Team to discuss options.