Internship Programme

Part of Trust Youth is about giving young people experience of what its like to be involved with running a charity.

This year Trust Youth are extending this by putting on an Internship programme in Oxford. Students at university who are interested in gaining real experience in running a growing charity are invited to apply.

It can be difficult to gain a job working for a charity after graduating, and there are few internships available. Trust Youth isn't limiting applications to only those who want a career in the charity sector, but we are looking for those interested in charities and social enterprise.

More information can be found below - do get in touch if you have any questions.

Internship Programme in more detail

Trust Youth are looking for highly motivated and enthusiastic people to join their first ever Internship Programme. This is an excellent basis for anyone looking to work in the charity sector, but also valuable experience for those considering other careers. We provide real hands on experience of helping to run a growing charity, and also provide and pay for training.

In return we ask for dedication, commitment and enthusiasm for the project. Working with the Project Manager, a recent Oxford graduate, candidates must be easy to work with, open to ideas and with a sense of humour!

Candidates must be able to commit 4-5 hours a week during termtime (in Oxford), plus a bit during vacations (at home).

We are looking for a Schools’ Co-ordinator Intern, Research & Development Intern, an IT Intern and two Fundraising Interns. Please see below for more information.

How to apply: please send a brief CV & covering letter via email to info@trustyouth.org
Closing date for applications: 25th October 2007
Internship duration: Michaelmas 2007 to Trinity 2008

Please feel free to email us at info@trustyouth.org if you have any other questions.

John, Susie and Jamie
The Trust Youth Team

Schools’ Co-ordinator Intern

The Trust Youth Schools’ Co-ordinator Intern will be responsible for helping to co-ordinate liaisons with schools. Trust Youth currently works with 15 schools and we aim to double this during academic year 2007/8. Working with the Project Manager, the role can broadly be split into two areas:

1) Responsibility for liaising and building partnerships with current schools, charities and mentors

• Keeping in regular contact with our teacher contacts who are facilitating the project, and our supporters and advisers in each region, answering questions and offering support wherever possible
• Organising the regional celebration events
• Liaising with school teams to ask for articles for the blog
• Liaising with our partner charities
• Advising and supporting mentors from our partner charities
• Updating the database of schools

2) Responsibility for forging links with new schools, charities and partners

• Organising mailings to targeted schools
• Creating links with Local Authorities and other partners who might be able to publicise Trust Youth
• Contacting and liaising with potential partner charities
• Updating the database of schools contacted

This is an excellent opportunity for anyone looking to gain experience in working with schools, young people or charities. You will gain a real understanding of education and charity issues, policy and priorities including social inclusion. There will be (optional) opportunities to visit schools around the country and see the work of the teams at first-hand. The Schools’ Co-ordinator Intern will play a major part in helping to deliver Trust Youth projects to schools, and will have an important role to play in influencing the development of the charity.

Research & Development Intern

The Trust Youth Research & Development Intern will be working with the Project Manager on strategy, and helping to put into practice such strategy. Responsibilities include:

• Researching specific areas of work, budgeting and presenting findings to the Directors
• Evaluating and monitoring Trust Youth progress, suggesting improvements
• Ensuring efficacy of branding and marketing, tailoring and changing where necessary
• Planning for increased involvement by young people in the governance and strategy of Trust Youth
• Creating evaluation forms for pupils, teachers and partners
• Analysing characteristics of the types of schools, teachers and pupils opting for Trust Youth, with a view to widening Trust Youth’s reach
  
• Analysing evaluation and feedback from pupils, teachers and partners
• Helping to plan the next stage in the strategic development and expansion of Trust Youth
• Helping to produce a full set of policies, including child/vulnerable adult protection, diversity, and personnel policies
• Writing content for the Trust Youth website (www.trustyouth.org) and blog (www.trustyouth.blogspot.com)
• Updating the Trust Youth Student, Facilitator (teacher) and Mentor information packs

This is a real opportunity to help develop the strategy and influence the success of Trust Youth. The Research & Development Intern will gain tangible experience in utilising the power of research to positively impact on the development of the charity.

Fundraiser Intern x 2

The two Trust Youth Fundraiser Interns, working with the Project Manager, will be responsible for ensuring the long-term financial future of Trust Youth. Responsibilities include:

• Researching funders – mainly trust funds, but also investigating government and corporate funding
• Making contact with potential funders
• Managing the relationship with funders, ensuring communication and long-term partnership
• Investigating the viability of gaining sponsorship from businesses, organisations or individuals
• Compiling a database of all funders and potential funders
• Putting in place long-term funding and financial plans

Fundraiser Interns will gain real experience in fundraising and help find the funds to be able to expand and develop the project in more schools, making a difference to the lives of more young people.

Fundraiser Intern x 2

The two Trust Youth Fundraiser Interns, working with the Project Manager, will be responsible for ensuring the long-term financial future of Trust Youth. Responsibilities include:

• Researching funders – mainly trust funds, but also investigating government and corporate funding
• Making contact with potential funders
• Managing the relationship with funders, ensuring communication and long-term partnership
• Investigating the viability of gaining sponsorship from businesses, organisations or individuals
• Compiling a database of all funders and potential funders
• Putting in place long-term funding and financial plans

Fundraiser Interns will gain real experience in fundraising and help find the funds to be able to expand and develop the project in more schools, making a difference to the lives of more young people.

IT Officer Intern

The Trust Youth IT Officer Intern will be responsible for running, enhancing and developing the Trust Youth technological capacity. Amongst other things, this includes:

• Updating the Trust Youth website and blogs
• Investigating enhancement and maximisation of Trust Youth website and technology
• Implementing and moderating a message board
• Implementing survey technology to enable streamlined feedback comment from partner schools, teachers and charities
• Creating a database to track schools, finance and targets
• Researching software and hardware to buy
• In addition to this, the IT Officer will help with the general running of Trust Youth when not working on IT-related issues

The IT Officer Intern will play a major role in helping to develop the charity. In order for Trust Youth to expand to more schools, and to engage with young people, we need to improve on our technological communications, as well as our technological infrastructure. The IT Officer Intern will enable Trust Youth to improve operations substantially. There will also be an opportunity to develop other skills and be closely involved in the running of the charity.

Headlines for 2006–7

It's been an exciting second year for Trust Youth. Below are some of the headlines from the year. Thank you to all the pupils, teachers, schools and supporters that have helped make this such a good year.

- Expansion to Midlands, West Country and Belfast (in addition to London)

- Scheme run successfully in 13 schools (with expansion to 30 planned for 2007-8)

- Four training events held attended by over 100 young people

- The British Red Cross promoted to over 6,000 school pupils

- Over 100 young people involved and over £2000 raised

- Three celebration events held

- Web site up and running

- Backing from third sector, local authorities and schools secured

- New charities joining

- Turnover up from £4,700 to £26,000

- Project Manager appointed

- Company registered at companies house

- Charity status granted

Trust Youth travels to the West Midlands!

The Trust Youth team travelled to Birmingham last week to meet our two teams in the West Midlands, Redhill School in Dudley and Willingsworth High School down the road in Sandwell.

Navigating the inner-city rail network was a bit of a challenge, but we managed to reach Redhill in time for our lunchtime visit. Chief Executive Officer Siân and her team of Year 10s have been busy working away on their Trust Youth project since the training two months ago. Having had loads of different and innovative ideas, from treasure hunts to hugathons, they settled on a couple of exciting events – we won’t spoil it for you as the team are, as we speak, busy penning a blog posting which we hope to put up in the near future. A big thanks to Miss Rudd and the team for their friendliness and hard work raising funds and awareness for the British Red Cross!

A couple of hours later we were entering Willingsworth High to meet Miss Kinley’s new Trust Youth team of Year 9s. The initial ice-breaker of ‘who would you like to be stuck in a lift with’ was met with strikingly similar answers – the girls stuck for footballers Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, while boys preferred the charms of Jordan. No-one plumped for the safest option: a lift technician. Trust Youth’s co-Director, John, came and put on a leadership exercise to see which team could build the biggest tower. At admirable speed, both teams did very well. We’re looking forward to seeing what the team can do!

Both teams will come together in a prestigious West Midlands Celebration event in September. We’ll keep you posted as to how it goes.

London Celebration

Today saw the Trust Youth London Celebration in the fantastic venue of 11 Million in London Bridge, just south of the Thames. Our five London schools, pupils, teachers and supporters came together to celebrate their achievements so far in raising awareness and funds for the British Red Cross.

Each team were asked to give a five minute powerpoint presentation. The London Academy won the award for Best Presentation, with all the team joining in presenting their main ideas: a school dress-down day, charging for teachers for the use of the car park and a teacher sponging event (how did they ever get permission?!). The Crown Woods team won the award for the Most Creative Idea for their innovative project to provide refreshments after the school’s Oliver production. Both awards were voted for by all the pupils present, and presented by Robin Wells, British Red Cross Youth Development Coordinator who had kindly come in all the way from Norfolk.

Other teams also impressed. Salisbury School, in their second year doing Trust Youth, facilitated by their teacher Miss Maclay, are having a non-uniform day, a teacher car wash, a talent show (Salisbury’s Got Talent) and cake sales amongst other ideas, so they are very busy!
Ashburton Community School, chaired by their Chief Executive Officer Anton, have been running a number of events (including CSI nights, movie nights and a quiz), but the main fundraiser for the British Red Cross has been their recent sponsored rounders match. They impressed with a very slick presentation.

Quintin Kynaston, from Westminster, also had a great idea of running a tuck shop at their school based around healthy eating. Patrice, Reece, Toiseja, Sarah, Arian, Assal, Hamdi and the team told us about their project which has got off to a flying start, supported by their teacher Mr Akinsowon.

After the presentations we had a surgery where the teams helped solve each others’ challenges and hurdles faced. This was followed by a speech by the British Red Cross’s Robin, who thanked all the teams for their fantastic efforts.

With many thanks to all the pupils and teachers who attended, as well as to Rachel Booles from the British Red Cross and Ulrika Hogberg from UnLtd. And also to 11 Million, and Ali and Nicole who organised the brilliant venue for us!

Advice from Crown Woods School, London!

Hello we are Crown Woods School,

Over the past 2 months we had been having meetings on how we can raise as much money as possible for the British Red Cross and get the British Red Cross well known. We had to think about what fundraising events we could put on for the school and its students.

Throughout the challenge we have had a number of difficulties. One of which was deciding on what events to do. We as a group debated and agreed on what the best ideas were and if we could achieve them.

Another problem we had come across was how many people would turn up to our meetings. One week would have 7 turn up and the next we would have just 2 people. To succeed in this challenge you need a good amount of business men and women to turn up week in week out.

Trust Youth are much appreciative of the money raised by all school, but what they really want for us young people to understand what the Red Cross do and how much trouble they go to succeed their aims and goals.

In our opinion these are the main points to have a successful team for this challenge;

- Make sure you have a certain amount of team members that will turn up week in week out.

- Once your group have written down the activities that are possible to do, stick with 2 or 3 of them and focus your whole group on that task.

- Make sure you have a good, reliable leader who wants to win and can motivate everyone.

Jamie, Crown Woods Trust Youth team

Trust Youth visits London Academy!

This afternoon Trust Youth popped in to meet the London Academy team near Edgware, at the far end of the Jubilee line.

On a hot and humid day it was a relief to escape the outside mugginess and step into the new, plush school building.

Mr Sheldon, Ms Knight, Ms Mitchell and Mr Sadgrove were all helping to facilitate the TY team of around seven Yr 10s.

The timing of the meeting was perfect, as the team were about to pitch to the Head to try and get the go-ahead for their project so they got to test it out!

We don’t want to give away their ideas before the Celebration, which is coming up on the 25th June, but it’s safe to say that, if the Head gives the go-ahead, several teachers should be quaking in their boots (or rather, in their wellies)!

Hopefully the team will do a blog posting in the near future so we’ll get to hear how they get on.

With many thanks to the team for being so friendly and accommodating!

Trust Youth and British Red Cross training events!

Last month, Trust Youth packed their bags to travel round the country putting on half-day training events in collaboration with the British Red Cross for our school teams in London, Belfast, West Midlands and Wiltshire.

First off were two sessions in London, under the skilled direction of the Red Cross’s Rachel Booles and Andy Lloyd. Rachel and Andy started off with a fascinating pitch about the work of their organisation. This showed the astonishing range of services the Red Cross provide – it’s not just about international development or first aid.

Then came the first workshop, on message communication, vital for Trust Youth teams who are entrusted with putting across the message of the British Red Cross in their school. The Crown Woods team, from Greenwich, immediately set the pace, with creative ideas on ways of designing a poster as well as how to catch the attention of their audience.

After a quick biscuit break the Red Cross team went straight into their second workshop on how to put on an event. Teams were asked to think up an event and to budget and cost for it. To the dismay of the party-lovers in the audience, it was emphasised that it’s a lot harder to put on a bash than it first seems! Ashburton School in Croydon came up with some interesting ideas for events.

The final workshop, on leadership, was the best received, with teams having to build a free-standing paper tower, with the highest one the winner! Teams had to choose a leader, who had to orchestrate the building but couldn’t touch anything. They were given a budget of £5, with each item (paper, sellotape, paper cups etc) costing a certain amount. After much debate, activity and outstanding feats of engineering the winners were announced, with The London Academy, from Edgware, showing great creativity and building nous!

Many thanks to the Red Cross for putting on the sessions, which received fantastic feedback from the teams. Log back later to see reviews of training in our other areas!

Who are we?

Penny Sharland (Trustee)
Penny started her career as a Probation Officer specialising in work with young offenders. She has had a varied approach to work since then, moving to NACRO to do policy work on youth justice and then into private business as a management consultant with the radical collective Framework. After 15 years working with public and voluntary sector organisations Penny changed direction again to lead Oldham Youth Offending Service in 2005. This demanding role has lead Penny to develop her approaches to some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, as well as the most challenging young people in the Borough. She enjoys putting the theoretical analyses about organisations and management that she learnt during her masters at Bristol University in 1994 - 6. She also has several years' experience of working voluntarily as a trustee with various organisations.

John Crossman (Director, Trustee)
After twenty years working in comprehensive schools and further education in Lancashire, John joined Education Extra and then ContinYou, charities which develop and promote learning outside the classroom. He is passionate about the value of young people taking on responsibilities outside the classroom and helped develop national policy and practice in the field over ten years

Susie Wooldridge (Director, Trustee)
As a newly qualified teacher in a challenging London school, Susie ran a Trust Youth project in her school funded by The UnLtd Millennium Awards Scheme, demonstrating the value of involving students in charitable activities and winning a Teach First School Projects Award. She was also commissioned to write a report investigating the provision for, and barriers to adult learning in Winchester. Currently, Susie is working for a charity called School-Home Support, which builds bridges between the home and school to enable children and young people to make the most of their education.

Roger Cooper (Company Secretary)
Roger qualified as a Chartered Accountant (FCA) in 1967. He has spent over 30 years in the financial services sector, culminating in being Finance Director of Towry Law plc and being part of the team that brought this company to full listing on the London Stock Exchange in 1993. Since 1996 he has worked on his own account as a Chartered Accountant specialising in the financial and other management of charities. Roger joined Trust Youth in 2005 as Company Secretary.

Jamie Dear (Project Manager)
Jamie joined Trust Youth in early 2007. Previously he was Director of Jacari, a charity in Oxford providing home teaching for children who don’t speak English as their first language and is currently chair of the board of trustees. He has a varied experience of the voluntary and community sector having managed the Card Aid charity shop in Richmond, West London, for the Charities Advisory Trust. In addition to his responsibilities with Trust Youth Jamie works with Helen & Douglas House children’s hospice, and is currently in the process of setting up a social enterprise company, Oxford Fission.

What is Trust Youth?

Trust Youth (TY) is a charity providing opportunity for practical citizenship and awareness of the voluntary sector in schools.

We help students to set up ‘mini-charities’ in schools which raise funds and awareness for a national charity (this year it is the British Red Cross).

We provide materials and support for our partner schools, put on training events for pupils and celebration events where the young people can win national awards. We are currently working with 20 schools in four regions throughout the UK. Schools taking part last year raised a combined total of £2,500.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Trust Youth blog. This is a blog for all of our schools, partners and charities, but particularly the students we work with. It's YOUR blog, so YOU decide what you want on it (within reason!). Let us know how your TY project is going, what fundraising and awareness raising projects you've put on, how much you've raised etc - we'd love to hear.

Let us know what you want published and send it through to us at trustyouth@trustyouth.org and we'll put it up!