Camden Giving’s #FutureChangemakers Fund
Last February, 3 young men were stabbed in Camden in 1 night, 2 fatally. As a result, Camden Giving, members of our co-working space Camden Collective, started fundraising for a fund with a twist — all the decisions would be made by young people who have experience of life’s challenges.
We are pleased to announce that both CTU and our sister organisation Euston Town have collectively put £20k worth of funding towards this vital project. By investing in this, we are trusting and empowering young people who don’t get trusted with money and power enough.
Camden Giving have recruited 10 diverse young people (most pictured above) through youth services, schools and charities in Camden and they are, specifically, young people who have even witnessed tragic incidents of youth crime in Camden.
Over the next 3 months they will decide, at Camden Collective, which youth services need funding in order to improve youth safety. They will then open applications to charities, schools, social enterprises and community groups. This will culminate in a panel meeting in May/ June to award £85,000 to their favourite projects and the work that they fund will go ahead from the summer holidays onwards. They’ll be working with Camden Giving to shape the fund criteria and guidelines, based on what they know young people want and need for their area. On Tuesday 26th February, they took part in their first meeting and discussed social media, access to quality employment and expressed shock at funding cuts to charities.
On top of this, some of the young people involved in the project are NEETs and Camden Giving will be able to offer them work experience at Camden Giving or one of their friendly businesses!
We think this is a fantastic initiative for us to be supporting as we believe it’s so vital for businesses to trust young people to make decisions that are most important and relevant to them and their collective future.
More updates on the project to follow!
Find out more about the project and Camden Giving here.
