supporting young people and communities

three friends on a bench with arms around each other

It’s 2011. Not an easy year to be a young!

Peer-acceptance, the need to have the right ‘stuff’ and wear the right clothes, the relentless pursuit of that ever-elusive quality known as ‘being cool’, these things and many more pile the pressure on children and force them to grow up long before their time.

And for hard-to-reach young people, young people from families with extremely low incomes, and young people at risk of marginalisation, these pressures are intensified by the challenges of living without the safety-nets that most people take for granted.

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Spurgeons recognises that one of the most effective ways to reach vulnerable young people is by working with them in their own community. By establishing dialogue with children and young people most at risk of deprivation, we can better understand them and better help their community to find solutions to the challenges they face. .. Our aim is to facilitate them in doing this through training, support and skills-enhancement. We provide activities such as:

  • parenting support
  • youth and children’s activities
  • community events
  • homework clubs

Such activities are designed to help people to deal with issues like inter-generational breakdown and anti-social behaviour and can help to build stronger families and healthier and more cohesive communities.

fast facts

fast facts about young people and communities

  • Nearly 13 million people live in poverty in the UK – that’s 1 in 5 of population. [1]
  • 3.8 million children in the UK are living in poverty.
  • 2.2 million pensioners in the UK are living in poverty.
  • 7.2 million working age adults in the UK are living in poverty.
  • 70% of Bangladeshi children in the UK are poor.
  • Women are in the majority in each of the poorest groups.
  • London has a higher proportion of people living in poverty than any other region in the UK
  • The UK has a higher proportion of its population living in relative poverty than most other EU countries: of the 27 EU countries, only 6 have a higher rate than the UK.

[1] All statistics courtesy of www.poverty.org.uk