SOWING SEEDS FOR SUCCESS

Abstract

OverviewLET'S start by giving an overview of what The Trust actually does. Our mission is to help young people who would otherwise not have the opportunity to succeed. That means we target the 'hardest to reach' with our main focus on young people who have struggled at school, have been in care, are long-term unemployed or have been in trouble with the law. In the North West alone we aim to support around 4,000 young people every year to move forward in their lives - working with them to develop their skills and confidence, assisting them into self-employment and ultimately helping them to realise their true potential. We work hard to ensure that our services are used by those young people who have few of the support systems that we too often take for granted and, as a result, more young people than ever are now accessing our services.Evidently, the very nature of our work is challenging. In order to sustain this level of activity and continue to respond to local needs we need to keep abreast of the changing environment and the needs of our clients; we need to ensure we are linking in with partner organisations for the benefit of the young people we support and, of course, we need to ensure we have the necessary funds to actually be in a position to deliver.So, how does all of the above actually pull together in practice?The key has been to put young people at the very heart of everything we do. It sounds obvious but customer-focus is something many organisations can lose sight of. Luckily, we're not one of those organisations. The Trust has always had a philosophy of trying new things, if something isn't working for the young people, we'll look at how we can change it and we are constantly trying new and innovative ways to ensure that all young people know about and can access our services when needed.Our managementWithin the North West, we have a dynamic and visionary Executive Team that is supported by The Prince's Trust North West Regional Council, led by chairman Colin Silcock. This is part of a national structure with the CEO and head office team reporting to the National Council.Our five operational heads manage our work in each of our counties (Cumbria, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Lancashire) with their own staff teams and volunteers delivering our programmes on the ground. The needs and issues within each county obviously vary considerably. For example, rural isolation is a key issue for young people in Cumbria that we must respond to while, in Greater Manchester, our focus is on the more deprived, inner-city areas where youth offending and unemployment are high. This goes back to the need for flexibility - we are constantly changing, developing and examining the way we work because of these evolving issues affecting the young people we seek to help.We also have dedicated development, external relations and resources teams in the North West who work with me to position and develop the Trust at a regional level, to instigate new approaches to meet demonstrated need and to ensure that our work is effectively communicated to all of our stakeholders.Supporting our staff in the North West is a team of over 1,000 volunteers without whom we could not function. These volunteers work tirelessly in their own time to mentor and support young people and are very much the backbone to the success of The Trust. One of our key priorities is therefore to ensure that these volunteers are not only trained and managed effectively, but that they too are benefiting from a positive experience.The challengesIt soon becomes evident then, that management in the voluntary sector has all of the challenges that any commercial organisation would have but many more as well, given our non-profit making nature.Our work is funded by a combination of public sector funding (for example from The European Social Fund and The Learning and Skills Council) and private sector support. …