North East building society helps combat youth unemployment

Newcastle Building Society has granted the charity Streetwise £5k to help combat regional youth unemployment.

Streetwise provides young people aged 11 to 25 with counselling and emotional wellbeing services.

Following a review of their services, the charity started an employability service for young people formerly employed in the hospitality industry.

The Newcastle Building Society grant has enabled Streetwise to pay for the resources required to dedicate one of its weekly drop-in sessions to providing employability advice and one to one support for young people struggling to find work.

The project has helped around a dozen young people secure interviews, with five so far going on to secure new full-time or part-time jobs.

Mandy Coppin, chief executive at Streetwise, said: “We’ve never been busier than we have been over the last 18 months, and one of the biggest issues we’ve been trying to help with is that many young people have lost their foothold in the employment market.

“It’s widely accepted that younger people have been disproportionately affected by job losses during the pandemic, and many of our service users had either part-time jobs to help support them while they’re in education or full-time jobs in the hospitality sector that effectively vanished overnight.”

On the success of the scheme, Mandy added: “We’re already beginning to see results for the additional focus we’re now able to provide on employability and we’re very hopeful that there’s a lot more to come.”

Graeme Fowler, community ambassador at Newcastle Building Society, commented: “As all our communities face the impact of the pandemic, we’ve focused our grant making on helping to tackle issues around employability and food poverty, so it’s pleasing to support the practical and targeted service that Streetwise is providing.”