Founded in 1911, UK Youth provides young people aged 9-25 with high quality services, delivered through a network of locally accessible youth organisations across the UK.

Together they offer support, advice and training to over 830,000 young people to equip them with vital life skills and help them engage in education, volunteering and employment.

Their mission is to provide access to appropriate, high quality services for young people in every community so that all young people are empowered to build bright futures, regardless of their background or circumstances. Give it Away Limited gave UK Youth a donation at their Gala Dinner in June 2017, this gift will make a very real difference to young lives across the UK and help a young person like Sarah.

Just a few months before starting UK Youth’s Social Action Programme Sarah, 24 years old, was discharged from a year and half in hospital. Prior to that she had been homeless for two years and had been dealing with severe mental health problems following a traumatic family crisis.

Her circumstances had forced her to stop drama school training. Sarah became involved in UK Youth’s Social Action Programme in the hope of being able to make her way in the creative industry despite not having formal qualifications. Through the programme, she had the opportunity to deliver National Theatre Connections- a local project bringing theatre to deprived communities. She learnt a huge amount by taking part in the project, undertaking funding applications, venue bookings, budget management, marketing and theatre production. The project also gave Sarah the opportunity to contribute to her community by enabling other young people who faced similar challenges to herself to overcome these and pursue their talents.

She built critical emotional and social capabilities such as confidence and responsibility and now feels empowered to build a bright future for herself. In Sarah’s own words: “having had no confidence whatsoever in the strength of my ideas or in my ability to bring them about, I now know so much more about the ins and outs of creative production, and through putting it into practice have seen my creative output have an overwhelming effect.”