An unwavering ‘enthusiasm’ to help disadvantaged youngsters

In the latest edition of Marketing Derby’s Innovate Magazine, we meet April Allman, of Enthusiasm Trust, to talk about the work the charity does to help disadvantaged youngsters realise a better future.

Enthusiasm Trust has been working with young people from disadvantaged and deprived homes for more than 30 years.

A core aim of the charity is to help young people and their families develop the life skills needed to enable social mobility.

Its work reaches out to young people who are primarily drawn from Osmaston, Allenton and Alvaston, with smaller numbers from Chellaston, Sinfin and Shelton Lock.

It provides youth clubs, workshops, school holiday activities, homework support and one-to-one mentoring programmes with a view to showing young people a positive path.

It runs programmes for the most hard-to-reach young people and those who are at very high risk of criminal or anti-social behaviour.

Many have had multiple adverse childhood experiences, which have led to poor behaviour, aggression and frustration, and can see them excluded from school or, worse, within the judicial system.

Enthusiasm’s highly skilled youth workers secure engagement by building up trust and offering opportunity, hope, experience and the possibility of a future – no matter what the circumstances.

In the last 18 months they have supported more than 1,000 young people in the city, aged between 11 and 18 years old, who have been referred to them by schools, police and other agencies.

Enthusiam Trust was relaunched last year with a brand-new board of trustees, made up of some of the best-known names in the Derby business world.

They are led by April, who is keen for the wider business community to engage with the charity and support these youngsters.

She told Innovate: “If you bring wealth into an area and you make it more prosperous, you should be able to offer more opportunity and more employment, but there’s a section of society where they don’t have the skills to access those opportunities.

“That gap needs bridging and there needs to be more work done for the sector of society that is struggling to be prosperous in their own right.

“There needs to be a greater understanding of the level of deprivation and poverty in some areas of the city and a greater understanding of the world of crime and vulnerability.”

According to April, Enthusiasm Trust’s outreach work is having a positive impact – but the business community now needs to play its part.

She said: “We would like to say to businesses, right, it’s within your gift to collaborate with us and bring experience into these hubs where you’ve got lots of young people.

“We know that the more interventions you deliver and the more contacts you have with young people who are on the cusp of criminal or antisocial behaviour, the more likely you are to reverse that behaviour and positively  influence them to take a better path. But we can’t do that in isolation.”

The read the full feature on Enthusiasm Trust visit https://heyzine.com/flip-book/6824d67df2.html#page/62 .