Enterprise: a real catalyst for social mobility amongst disadvantaged young people?

Transcription

1 Enterprise: a real catalyst for social mobility amongst disadvantaged young people? Jiselle Steele Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship 2014 In partnership with

2 MORE ABOUT ME I am a Senior Project Manager with a range of experience developed from running projects and programmes to support young people and volunteers across London and the rest of the UK. I currently work for a social enterprise and youth marketing agency called Livity, helping to lead a project called somewhereto_ which enables year olds across the UK to access free space to fulfil their creative and entrepreneurial passions. I live and work in South London and love London as a city, but I have always been passionate about travel, discovering new parts of the world and gaining a more in-depth understanding of other cultures and ways of life. I learnt about the WCMT Fellowship from a former colleague who became a Fellow the year before and the prospect of combining my love for travel with the opportunity to develop personally and professionally seemed too good to be true. My professional experience before joining Livity nearly 4 years ago had been focused around the voluntary and third sector, however my time at Livity sparked my interest and expanded my knowledge around the possibilities of bringing about change through business and enterprise. Working in a social enterprise like Livity, combined everything I enjoyed about running projects to create opportunities for young people as well as the fast-paced, innovative and agile approaches that can underpin successful businesses to develop and empower young people through these opportunities. 2

3 CONTENTS 1. Introduction Key visits Key learnings Acknowledgements 14 3

4 1. INTRODUCTION Enterprise The original inspiration for my Churchill Fellowship came from my time in another organisation, managing a project that set out to engage hard to reach young people that were not in education, employment or training, and support them into positive employment and educations outcomes. Whilst the ambition of the project was well intentioned, the opportunities that young people were being offered were very limited and had little connection to what they were interested in or passionate about. The hard to reach young people that I worked with progressed into employment in entry level roles that had no connection to their skills, and often dropped out of the opportunities they were matched to, ending up in the same position as when they started. I ve always wanted to explore how disadvantaged young people could be supported to create their own opportunities, inspired by what they are interested in, and how this could lead to them changing their positions within their community and society. There are a number of different factors that impact social mobility for an individual from early years development, and limited access to quality education to lack of role models and low self-esteem and confidence. Whilst many of these factors may seem outside of the control of young people, I wanted to explore the role that enterprise could play in helping to re-dress the balance. The inspiration to explore this in Brazil came about following a work trip to Rio in 2012 where I gained a small insight into two fascinating projects, Agência de Redes para Juventude and Favela Criativa that were working with disadvantaged young people in favela communities. Although each project had different approaches they were both focused on equipping young people with the tools to develop projects that could change their lives and communities, and were encouraging young people to challenge the notion that where they started out was where they had to end up. I wanted to learn more about the work of these projects and others like them, and more importantly learn from the experiences of the young people involved, identifying ways that these learnings could be applied to projects working with disadvantaged young people in the UK. 4

5 1. INTRODUCTION My approach I initially set out to focus on enterprise in its most traditional sense, meeting projects and young people running their own businesses, whether they had a social purpose or were solely for profit. This quickly evolved to connecting with young people and projects engaging with enterprise in its broadest sense - creative, cultural and social projects of varying sizes that were set up and being driven forward by young people from different backgrounds. Whilst these projects weren t set up as businesses, the young people that ran them all applied a range of enterprising skills and qualities to make them happen including initiative, resilience, ambition, strategic thinking, communication and problem solving skills. I spent 9 weeks in Brazil and visited Rio, São Paulo, Pentecoste near Fortaleza and Salvador. I carried out interviews, designed and delivered a workshop, and developed questions that encouraged individuals and organisations to share their motivations and barriers to developing and delivering their projects and enterprises. I hoped that spending time with different organisations and young people would help me to identify common themes and tools connected to the role these projects were having in changing the positions of the young people involved or the belief in their ability to change their positions. I set up a blog Dar Uma Volta to help me to capture the insights and experiences I gathered along the way. I have included links to posts on the blog throughout this paper with full interviews and descriptions of the individuals and organisations I connected with. This paper summarises the learnings that I gained from some of the young people, individuals and organisations I met with and I will be continuing to update my blog with posts, featuring the young people and projects I haven t covered here. 5

6 1. INTRODUCTION Rationale I wanted to observe and learn from the young people and projects I met and inspire others through my experience. I was particularly interested in learning more about how young people in Brazil who were relatively more disadvantaged than young people in the UK were being given the tools to motivate themselves and change their lives. I was keen to learn more about the different techniques being used to engage harder to reach young people and how networks were being created to connect and inspire young people. I also wanted to discover whether there were different approaches and ideas for working with disadvantaged young people that could be adapted and applied to the work that my current project, somewhereto_ at Livity, does to support young people in enterprise. My Churchill Fellowship offered me the opportunity to reconnect with my passion for working directly with young people, spending time with a range of different Brazilian young people, gaining a better understanding of their drivers and motivators and learning how those working with them were supporting them to achieve their goals. I was hoping to gain further inspiration for my work with young people in the UK that I could share with my colleagues and other organisations that I work with. 6

7 2. KEY VISITS ADEL, Pentecoste ADEL run residential training courses which help groups of young people to learn more about the principles of enterprise and how these can be applied to business ideas that are inspired by or tackle a challenge faced by the communities the young people live in. It was really interesting to see that young people weren t just learning the theory with ADEL, they were applying what they learned to their real world experience. The strongest enterprise ideas that are developed on ADEL s training programme have the potential to access funding to help them become sustainable with young people developing a business plan and getting access to local business mentors. Spending time with the trainers highlighted the value of setting realistic goals and expectations around what the young people s businesses could achieve despite potential barriers and dedicating time to identifying the positive by-products that young people taking part gained as a result of running their own enterprise or project. The trainers recognised that one of the biggest issues for young people in rural communities was the feeling that they lacked control over their circumstances and taking part in the ADEL programme allowed them to be proactive, try out a business idea based on their experiences in the community and work towards getting their business off the ground. All of these elements can contribute to a young person feeling more empowered with an increased sense of well-being and belief in what they can achieve for themselves and their communities. Value The trainers came from the same communities as young people they were working with and had a real understanding of the barriers and challenges they were likely to face in trying to set up their businesses. The course being offered had been designed to meet the specific needs of young entrepreneurs from the region and when considering how similar projects for young people in the UK could be developed, I would be keen to consider how members of the communities I am working in could have a meaningful role in helping to design new projects. 7

8 2. KEY VISITS AGENCIA, Rio de Janeiro Rio is home to the Agência, the project that provided the original inspiration for my Fellowship in Brazil. The Agência focuses on supporting young people from six favela communities to create their own cultural enterprises, using detached street engagement to connect with a group that are often overlooked. Young people are trained by their peers, taking part in a series of sessions that help them develop an idea for a project or enterprise, and to implement the steps needed to set it up in their communities. Normalising the idea of young people from favela communities striking out on their own and trying out an idea or running their own projects is an important part of the work that the Agência does, instilling young people with the confidence that they have the skills and abilities to make things happen. Working to help disadvantaged young people identify areas that they are passionate about is also crucial in the Agência s work to help young people to transform their circumstances. Value In the projects that I have worked on in the past, there is often opportunity for young people who have already discovered what their passion or particular area of interest is, but it can be more difficult to make an offering or support those young people who haven t discovered this yet. Spending time with the Agência highlighted the value of dedicating time to supporting young people to do some self-reflection, helping them to understand their motivations and skills better. Working towards achieving particular outputs and outcomes is a key indicator of success and impact for projects working with hard to reach young people in the UK but having a process in place to support young people to do some initial exploration is a key first phase that I would be keen to incorporate to future projects I m involved with. The need to increase the visibility of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the enterprises and projects they have set up or are involved with, was highlighted by various young people I met and those working with them and their communities. Greater visibility and gaining recognition for their projects can help young people to access vital resources and increase how valued the work being done in their communities is. It can also help to create more role models for disadvantaged young people to emulate and be inspired by. I would be keen to develop more ways to highlight the success stories of young people that have been supported by different organisations and projects in the UK, focusing on what it has taken for the young people to get there and what their circumstances had been before. 8

9 2. KEY VISITS Luta Pela Paz (LPP), Rio de Janeiro Luta Pela Paz a charity working in Brazil and the UK to use boxing and martial arts to engage, educate and develop children and young people in communities that suffer from crime and violence. The team at Luta Pela Paz place a great deal of value in encouraging the theory of change, changing each young person s perception of themselves and the opportunities available to them. The rationale behind this approach is a simple one but it felt like it was really having an impact on the young people LPP were working with. Young people were being supported to see the potential in themselves but also seeing more potential in the opportunities that were being presented to them. Value My time spent with LPP and other youth projects such as Cinema Nossa highlighted a difference in attitude and outlook amongst young people in Brazil and the UK when it comes to considering potential opportunities they are offered. Opportunities for young people in favela communities in Brazil are very limited with access to programmes that support young people to develop their skills or create their own projects being rare and in very high demand when they come along. Young people in favela communities don t expect to have opportunities like these so they are either driven to try and create their own or do everything they can to keep an opportunity when it comes along. This is a potentially a very different perspective from the way that opportunities are presented and viewed by young people in the UK where there are often lots of projects and organisations setting out to help young people improve their circumstances or achieve their goals. A common challenge for organisations and projects looking to work with young people is how to demonstrate the uniqueness of their offer, and how to persuade young people to stick with the opportunity they re given when there are so many other alternative options out there. It can be a difficult balance to strike but this could offer some learnings on how we frame opportunities for young people in the UK. 9

10 2. KEY VISITS Wings For Change, São Paulo A potential challenge for young people trying to improve their circumstances or their community is continually being viewed as disadvantaged in the first place, being defined by the issues that they have faced and the things that have held them back rather than what they are capable of or have the potential to achieve. Fundamentally, projects I met with such as Wings For Change suggested there is a need to change the negative labels and narrative associated with young people. Wings For Change offers young social entrepreneurs the platform to broaden their knowledge, gain exposure and visibility, and access new networks and resources. Young people in Brazil are often portrayed negatively in the media and have their own equivalent to the label NEET (not in education, employment and training) in Brazilian Portuguese, nem-nem-nem. A young person s efforts to improve their circumstances will be much more difficult if they focus on what they are lacking rather than what they have the potential to do. This challenge is likely to be even greater for disadvantaged young people who may have become disengaged with education early on and not had much opportunity to discover their potential talents. For children and young people growing up in favela communities, low quality education means that they can often leave school with no qualifications and an inability to dream or visualise what they could do with their lives from a career perspective. Value In our efforts to create opportunities for young people and enable them to change their circumstances, it is important that we re considering how to challenge the negative perceptions or mind-sets associated with young people by the communities that they are living in. It s important to tell highlight the potential of young people from challenging backgrounds to succeed and the role that different part of the community have to play in this by viewing young people more positively. This requires an attitudinal shift and is quite difficult therefore to get tangible results from in a fixed period, however it does need to be a consideration for projects working with young people and trying to link them to new opportunities. 10

11 2. KEY VISITS Imagina Na Copa, São Paulo People have many stereotypes and pre-conceived ideas that stop them from starting their own social project whether it s the perceived need to have money, be gifted or have some special knowledge. These preconceptions of what is required to start your own social project could mean that many young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds would never consider themselves in a position to set up their own project or business even though it could be a route for them to develop personally and professionally. Imagina Na Copa is a project setting out to develop a new vision of what it takes to create a social project and giving tools to young people to give it a go. Although start-up culture and the growth of social enterprises feels much more established in the UK compared to Brazil, there may still be a perception by disadvantaged young people that this is not for them. Creating more platforms like Imagina Na Copa in the UK would help highlight the success stories of young people that have set up their own projects or enterprises helping to counter this. Value Imagina Na Copa have created a toolkit to help young people set up their own projects and suggest that the first step to tap into the power of transformation is finding the answer to three questions what do you love doing, what do you care about and what do you feel you re good at. This feels like another straightforward approach but an important one to support young people to find what they are passionate about and help them create opportunities that change their positions in society. 11

12 3. KEY LEARNINGS It was fascinating to meet a range of young people and projects in their own environment, spending time in the communities that had inspired their projects, whether it was an online community news platform, a children s rights hub or a boxing studio. I discovered that the common challenge that many young people and organisations were trying to tackle through their projects was the contrast and level of disadvantage faced by people living in poorer communities and the ability to access or develop opportunities to address this. Recommendations I expected to discover a formula or method that would challenge or revolutionise my way of working with young people and projects in the UK but instead found that my time in Brazil reinforced a lot of the ideas that I already had and reminded me of how much I enjoy connecting with young people one to one. I did however identify some key points, which will influence the way I work with disadvantaged young people and support them to access opportunities that could change their circumstances. I would like to use the learnings below to provoke discussion amongst professionals working with young people, identifying examples of how some of these principles are already being put into practice and how these can offer inspiration and develop creative ways for these to be incorporated into existing and new projects: Normalise the idea of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds being able to strike out on their own and try out an idea Supporting disadvantaged young people to find what they are passionate about could help them create their own opportunities that change their positions in society Increase the visibility of young people from diverse backgrounds running enterprises and projects they have set up Apply the theory of change : changing young people s perceptions of themselves and the opportunities available to them, as well as the attitudes and mindsets of employers and projects offering opportunities to them Linked to the theory of change, challenge and change the negative labels and narrative around young people in the media and society as a whole Create a new vision of what it takes to create a social project or business, giving tools to young people to give it a go Create more platforms to highlight the successes of a range of young people that have set up their own projects or enterprises Set realistic goals and expectations around what a young person s business or creative project could achieve despite potential barriers, making the scale of success relatable Value of role models and examples of what is possible for disadvantaged young people 12

13 3. KEY LEARNINGS I hope to be able to share the ideas and approaches I learned, putting them into practice through my work with other projects and organisations in the UK creating opportunities for young people ongoing, whether or not they are disadvantaged. The range of projects and young people I met with in Brazil were much broader than enterprise and business, meaning the learnings that I gained can be applied to a broader range of projects in the UK. I am also really interested in connecting young people in Brazil with young people in the UK running similar projects or businesses in the UK or young people in the UK looking to embark on trying to run their own projects. Peer to peer inspiration and mentoring can be a powerful tool and doing this across territories could be even more powerful still. Whether sharing the individual stories of young people I met with, or using my experiences to influence the development or delivery of projects that I work on, I am keen to continue to explore and identify ways that my Fellowship can have a lasting and far-reaching impact in the UK. I am still working to identify some of these routes, with three main areas that I will be focusing on in the immediate future, which I have outlined below: 1. Create a hub for content around the young people and organisations I met with whilst in Brazil through my blog, Dar Uma Volta, providing case studies and inspiration for professionals and young people across the UK and inviting them to share their ideas and examples. I will publish content on a monthly basis to grow the blog s audience and collect case studies of organisations and projects in the UK. 2. Follow up with and continue to tell the stories of the young people and organisations that I met in Brazil. Many of the young people I met in Brazil were at the start of their professional and personal development journeys, with the potential for what they could achieve in terms of social mobility only just beginning. I am keen to learn more about how they continue to develop and identify further learnings that can be shared with young people and organisations in the UK. 3. I will be using the networks and contacts I have developed in Brazil to support the set up of a new 6 week training programme in Rio called Social Starters that will enable professionals from the UK and the rest of the world to learn more about social enterprise and its role in the lives of young people in Brazil. The training programme will be made up of a series of workshops and I will be able to share findings from my Fellowship as part of this. My Fellowship provided me with a fantastic opportunity to connect with some incredibly inspiring young people and projects and whilst I am still developing ideas around the longer term opportunity for sharing my experience with communities across the UK, my ambition is to have young people from Brazil 13 and the UK forming a central part of it.

14 4. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am incredibly grateful to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for awarding me a Fellowship and would like to thank the team for their support throughout. I would also like to thank Robert Malengreau for his support as a translator throughout my time in Rio, and Luna Juliana, Bruno Duarte, Ieda Rockenbach, Alex Teixera, Roberta Fortuna, Vinnie Ladeira, Katy Bailes, Sil Bahia and Myke Guilherme for helping make my time in Brazil feel like a home away from home. I met with a fantastic array of young people, professionals, projects and organisations and am incredibly thankful to everyone for how welcome they made me feel. I wasn t able to feature all of the projects and individuals I met with in this paper, however every meeting and connection I made helped to make my Fellowship an incredible experience and I have listed the key contacts and organisations below: AfroReggae - Eve Belanger, Roberto Pacheco Agência de Desenvolvimento Economico Local (ADEL) - Aurigele Alves, Elionardo, Neto Ribero, Wagner Gomes Agência de Redes para Juventude - Ana Paula Lisboa, Marcus Faustini Biblioteca Parque do Manguinhos - Nicolau Costta Changemakers - Daniela Matielo Cinema Nosso - Luis Nascimiento, Uerlem Quieroz, Julia, Maria Isabel EixoRio Imagina Na Copa - Mariana Ribiero Instituto Asas - Danielle Fiabane Leonardo Martins Dias Luta Pela Paz (LPP) - Lola Werneck, Bryony Duncan Meaningful Institute - Rachid Ndiaye, Dino Colonno, Aline Horto Oi! Kabum Ipanema - Vinnie Ladeira, Fernanda Todeschini Observatorio de Favelas People's Palace Projects - Paul Heritage Practacum Music School - Selma Calabrich Prefeitura Municipal do Rio de Janeiro - Victor De Martino, Natália Lackeski Projeto Didá - Víviam Caroline de J. Queiró Rio+ Social - Tita Tepedino, Janille Santos, Felipe Lins Soldado Anonimo - João Lopes Viva Rocinha and Jornal Fala Roça - Michel Silva 14