The fund will provide homeless young people with individually-tailored support to work towards their career goals, whatever their previous education or work experience; whether it’s learning to read or write, applying to university or securing an apprenticeship.
Every year in the UK, 103,000 homeless young people are trapped in difficult circumstances, and End Youth Homelessness is a UK-wide network of local charities that have joined forces to tackle youth homelessness together. With 93 offices in the UK, Hays employees will help support member charities across UK regions including Centrepoint in London, Manchester and Yorkshire, The Rock Trust in Scotland and Step by Step in the South of England.
The new charity partnership comes as Hays announces the total raised with previous charity partner, Action for Children. Over the two-year partnership, Hays employees in the UK raised over £225,000 which has supported an employability programme for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds struggling to get their foot on the work ladder. The total raised has so far supported three cohorts of young people through the programme, and throughout 2019-20, will support a further four groups.
The partnership which begins this week, coincides with a new initiative from Hays to support employees to take up volunteering opportunities. The new scheme called #HaysHelps allows employees across Hays UK and Ireland to take one paid day of leave to volunteer for a charitable cause.
Simon Winfield, Managing Director of Hays UK & Ireland, comments: “We are very proud to have raised a fantastic amount for Action for Children over the past two years and are pleased to announce our new partnership to help tackle the devastating issue of youth homelessness.
Over the next twelve months I’m looking forward to seeing our employees across the UK come up with lots of creative fundraising ideas, as well as using our expertise where we can to help deliver employability and skills sessions to young people. Combined with our #HaysHelps initiative, our charity work allows us to make a difference and have a real impact on our local community.”
Julie Bentley, Chief Executive at Action for Children said: ‘On behalf of all the team at Action for Children, I would like to thank everyone at Hays for making our two-year partnership such an outstanding success. We are incredibly grateful to all Hays colleagues for their engagement and fundraising efforts throughout our partnership. With Hays’ generous support, Action for Children has been able to deliver three employability programmes, with four more to come, that will transform the future life chances for some of the most disadvantaged young people in the UK by helping them to access, and maintain, training and employment opportunities.’
Nick Connolly, Founder and Managing Director, End Youth Homelessness, said: “As the founder of End Youth Homelessness I am incredibly excited about our new partnership with Hays. Our vision is to end youth homelessness, but we know this is only possible if individual young people have the aspiration, skills, and confidence necessary to secure and retain employment. Over the next 12 months, we will be working in partnership to give at least 80 young people the chance to succeed.”
