APNA YOUTH Year 3 Exec Report: Southall Detached Youth Project 2024-2025
Introduction
Apna Youth is a volunteer led grass roots charity from the West London suburb of Southall, established in 1999. We have come to the final year of a three-year National Lottery Community Grants award of £72,355. The project seeks to deliver a bespoke, targeted street-based youth project employing two Detached Youth workers who will use intense key working methods with an identified cohort of young people from the Southall area.
The two youth workers will engage an identified group of young people in the community. Once they’ve built up trust and confidence with them, they will carry out a needs assessment, provide support and guidance. This would be done through the delivery of a 10–12-week program of workshops and positive activities for the identified young people that we have engaged. Whilst engaging the young people we will support them and where appropriate refer them to other agencies and projects in and around the community.
Year 3 Key outcomes and highlights
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Recruitment of part time youth worker following bereavement of key youth work staff in September 2024.
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Delivery of 10-week personal development program at the Parkside yards with 70% engagement of youth group
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Two young people volunteering with Park Run Southall.
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Successful delivery of our 24[th] annual Primary Schools Football festival supported by three of our young people from our first personal development programme in 2023.
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Continued development of partnership with Young Ealing Foundation
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72 young people contacted by APNA YOUTH over the three years
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40 young people registered (12-2023 programme, 8-2024 programme)
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Approached by ACT and Parkrun Southall to support with the introduction of Junior Parkrun in Southall
Overview of Year 3 and Project
Year three has been a mixed year ending in disappointment for the project despite the highs of our School Sports Festival and the delivery of our second personal development programme with an engaged cohort of young people. The programme sessions were delivered for the second time at the Parkside yards development in Southall from 7pm-8:30pm and had a core group of eight (8) attendees with three of the group having over 80% attendance, interestingly two young females were engaged in the group.
Highlights from the sessions included
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One of the most engaging sessions were the two workshops delivered by Abdul Karim from Solution focus world around ‘Clicking’-child financial exploitation/money mules and the dangers this poses for young people.
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Elivis Hall’s session around Nutrition and adopting a healthy lifestyle through exercise and diet.
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Through the programme we were able to refer one young person to Southall Park run and the individual is now regularly volunteering
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Supported two young people with their Provisional driving license applications During the course of the programme, we delivered two trips to Go karting and VR Escape Wembley with a presentation for the group in week 10.
Okiemute Akpogheneta (Ox for Real) who delivered a profound and thoughtprovoking session around his mental health journey in our first programme, was invited back to deliver his session. Unfortunately, due to the age of our second cohort the session was not as impactful as it was in the first year. The Police were invited back to deliver their Stop and Search session, but due to the restructure and streamlining of Southall Police BCU Police unit, they cold not deliver a session to the level that Sgt Benjamin facilitated in Autumn 2023, who unfortunately was made redundant.
Project Overview
2024/2025 has been a difficult year for APNA YOUTH following the death of one of our youth workers Mohammed Hassan in September 2024 because of his battle with cancer. Mohammed was a key person in our team; he was a Youth worker who was local to Southall, and being of Somali decent he was a was an individual who was able to engage the ‘need to reach’ Somali youth from the Southall area. Mohammed’s loss was a devasting blow to our organisation and was the main factor in us not being able to engage a solid group in our final year.
The group who engaged in our second programme in the Autumn did not reach the level of out first cohort and were a younger age group made up of KS3 and KS4 young people (13-15 years) although we had two females attend and participate in the programme. Despite being younger than our first cohort and at times not having the level of emotional literacy we had a good level of engagement with a consistent group of 8 young people.
The multi-year funding from the Lottery has been a good learning for APNA YOUTH. We have built and developed solid links in the community and have raised our profile locally and across the borough with the other like-minded organisations as well as the Local authority. We have developed partnership working with the Parkrun Southall team by referring three of our young people to them over the three years, the team has recently approached us to support them in the development of Junior Park Run in Southall targeting young people up to the age of 14. We have affiliated ourselves with the Young Ealing Foundation with one of our former youth workers Lydia Lawrence being nominated for an award. Elected members have come out on a walk about with our youth workers and have awarded us £5,000 grant in our first year and we have been invited to community meetings to give insight to the community around youth matters. Other youth groups like Jamal Edwards Delve, FPF Academy, Actonians LFC, London Tigers, Kaizen Boxing and ACT Southall have partnered with us and have explored joint projects. As well as this we have contact with Ealing Children’s Services and the Community Safety Team in particular around our work in the Havelock estate.
Recruitment and retention of staff has been the most difficult part of our project with one of our Youth Workers, Mohammed Hassan passing away in September 2024 following his battle with throat cancer. As a local person from the Golf Links estate, he was a well-respected Youth worker who had good links with Somali community across Southall, his loss to the team came at a critical time for us and had a significant impact on our work. Due to personal circumstances Lydia Lawrence left the project in December 2024 and again her experience and personal journey as a young person really resonated with the young people we were both targeting and engaged making her loss another difficult hole to fill.
With January and February being a natural lull in street-based youth work as nights are longer, darker and weather is colder we were able to initially absorb both Mohammed’s and Lydia’s absence. Street based sessions were delivered from March-August and are currently being delivered until the end of October as spend on our grant commenced in September 2022/down time in Jan/Feb. It was hoped that we would have engaged with a third new cohort of young people to deliver our personal development programme in the Autumn of 2025, but our youth work staff have not been able to consistently engage and build up trust with a group of young people. In the time up to half term the youth workers will be carrying out outreach in the Southall area signposting young people to the Young Adult centre in Southall and towards one of our partners Jamal Edwards Delve who run a youth session on Thursday nights in the Lancaster Estate, Southall.
The two new youth workers experienced many challenges in the Southall area which we as an organisation found difficult to support them with. During their detached sessions they were confronted by aggressive begging in the Southall Broadway ward and the UB2 area, regularly witnessed class A drug use, street prostitution and one of our youth workers had her car broken into in June of this year. With the West Area Police BCU having financial cuts across their service there was little or no Police presence in the area and at times their safety was something we could not guarantee. An increasing number of girls were engaged but we were unable to support them due to not having female staff.
Engagement with our first wave of young people was consolidated with one of the young people completing a referee course and becoming a qualified football referee,
whilst another will be undertaking a Level 1 FA Coaching badge, and three young people volunteered at our primary schools showcase event in June 2025. One of the young people from our first wave was signposted and supported with a job application for Thorpe Park for his gap year and helped in the recruitment of some of the young people for our second programme in Autumn 2024. Two young people from our programme in Autumn 2024 have been refereed to Park Run Southall, with one of the young people Niel Miranda now regularly volunteering. As a result of this Parkrun Southall have asked if we can support them with setting up Junior Park Run in 2026.
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1. Morning Briefing at our annual primary school’s football festival at Norwood Hall, June 27 2025
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Vinod Mahi, Chair of Apna Youth and Aman Jaswal, Youth Project lead with David Okaoro one of our first young people from our programme, now a qualified Referee and officials at our football festival
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Sgt Ian Benjamin’s Police Session from 2023 Session with our first cohort of young people
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Youth Worker, Vicky Roberts delivering her Road legal workshop during our workshops in Autumn 2024
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Tried and Tested activity(Go-karting) The boys having their safety briefing. End of the programme Dec 2024
5.In remembrance of Mohammed Hassan one of our local Youth Workers who passed away in September 2024
Spend Analysis
The Year three of the grant was paid in two instalments of £12,156 in June 2024 and December 2024 respectively, at total of £24,312.
Table - Year 3 Expenditure
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Year 3 Expenditure Breakdown Spend Forecast in grant
Staffing £7369 £11,232
Management Fee £2,230
Equipment £220 £450
Communications £720 £600
Mobile contracts x2
Website Domain, webs hosting
and design fees
Insurances £420
Training £600
Mental Health First Aid
12-week programme £4000
Schools Tournament £1800 Within trips £4000
Activity £800 Within trips £4000
(VR Meetspace)
Activity Go karting £880 Within trips £4000
Volunteer Expenses £765 £2200
Abode Software package,
transport, admin
Sundries £780 £220
Breakages, DBS, Printing,
Registrations ID cards, Food and
Drink
Total £19,764
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Remaining Funding of £4548 to be allocated towards:
Youth work delivery until end of October £800 (2x Youth workers 6hrs a week for 6weeks)
Proposal to take £2000 over to 2026 Tournament with youth volunteers in place
£500 towards Youth and Volunteer training in 2025/26 (FA Refereeing and Coaching
£1200 towards Junior Park Run Southall Partnership
Annual Accounmts Statement for Apna Youth 2024
Apna Youth is a volunteer led gras roots charity from the West London suburb of Southall, estbalished in 1999 A Apna Youth seeks to provide a Youth Service for young people in and around Southall by providing them with Sp
Currently Apna Youth supports Southall Park Run, provides community yoith football, holds and annual primary
Apna Youth contsinues to operate within their fiscal controls and surplus taken forward to 2025 has been accou
APNA YOUTH ACCOUNTS 2024
| INCOME | £GBP |
|---|---|
| Lottery (Grant) | 24312 |
| Heathrow Community Fund(Grant) | 1919.25 |
| Southall Community Allinace | 1500 |
| Groundwork(Grant) | 337.5 |
| SSB | 300 |
| Singh Sabha Gurdwara Southall | 200 |
| Euro Heating | 400 |
| Lets go Southall | 200 |
| School Entry Fee | 1200 |
| Total | 30368.75 |
| Expenditure 2024 | £GBP |
|---|---|
| Stafing | 9091 |
| Sessional and external facilitators for workshops | 1200 |
| Management Fees | 2165 |
| Activities (VR Room and Go-karting) | 1810 |
| Tournament | 6650 |
| Park Run | 150 |
| Training | 200 |
| Communications(web hoting, mobile phones) | 870 |
| Volunteer gifts/awards | 790 |
| Equipment | 600 |
| Sundries (DBS, Breakages, Food and Drink) | 310 |
| AGM | 900 |
| Transport | 310 |
| Insurances | 420 |
| Trustee Expenses | 825 |
| Total | 26291 |
I can confirm that the above is a true reflection of the annual accounts for APNA YOUTH for 2024
Name: Aman Singh Jaswal Date: Name: Date: Independent Accountant
APNA YOUTH was founded on the Sikh principle of Sewa(selfless service). ports, Music and Arts activites.
y schools football festival, street based youth work in Southall and Youth consultancy.
unted for with yoith activiies
AnnualAccount5 StatsmentforApna Yoylh 2024 Apna Youth is a volunteer led gra5 root5 charStyfrom the West London suburb of Souihall, eslablJ$hed in 1999 APNA YOUTH was lounde(J on the Slkh prlnGlple of SewB (selfless 5eNlceJ. Apna yoth seekto provlde a Youth Setvlce foryoung people In and around Southall by provlding them Sports. Music andArts actwltes. CurrentlyApna Youth support Southall Park Run. provldes communityyolth football, hold5 and annual primary schools toolball festival. 5treet-basedyouth work In Southalland youth consultancy. Apna Youth contlnue to opelate wlthln thelrfi5calconirols and surplus taken forwar([ to 2025 has been accounted lorwith youth actlvities. APNA YoufH ACCOUNT52024 INCOME ÈGBP LotterylGrantl Heathrowcommunity FundlGrantl Southall CommunityAllinace GroundworklGrantl SSB Sin8h Sabha Gur¢lw8ra Southall EUTO Heating Lets go Southall School EntryFee 24312 1919.25 1500 337.5 300 200 400 21)0 1200 Total 30368.75 Expendlture2024 £GBP Stafflng Sessional and externalfacilttaiors foiworkshops Management Fees Activities IVR Room and Go-kartlngi Tournarnenl Park Aun Trainlng Communlc*lonslweb hoUn& moblte phones) Volunteergiftslawards Equlpmenl Sundries IDBS. Breakages, Food ano Drlnkl AGM Transport Insurances Trusiee Expenses 9091 1200 2185 1810 6650 150 200 870 790 600 310 900 310 420 825 Tol41
I can confimi thatthe above Is a twe refiectlon olthe annualaccounts foiAPNA YOUTH lor2024 Name: Aman SinOiJa5wal TKCA Date: Name: Sundeepjaga Date: q Iio I8. lrtdependentAccountsnt