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As more and more young people call for urgent action to address rising knife crime, two of the leading charitable funders have come together to help tackle the problem.

The Youth Endowment Fund is partnering with Comic Relief to launch a new £6m joint funding programme to support organisations working to prevent youth offending.

Announced during Friday night’s Sport Relief, the partnership brings together the Youth Endowment Fund’s expertise in evidence, evaluation and scaling impact with Comic Relief’s unrivalled reach, trust and creativity.

The two charities will co-design the new funding programme, with input from young people affected by youth violence and those individuals and organisations with experience of preventing it. Further details of the programme will be announced later in the year.

Comic Relief becomes the Youth Endowment Fund’s first official partner since it was established last year with a ten-year, £200m endowment from the Home Office. To date, the independent charitable trust has awarded 23 projects, working with 36,000 children across England and Wales, a total of £17.1m.

Jon Yates, Executive Director of the Youth Endowment Fund, said:“No child or young person should grow up in fear of violence. Fortunately, there are many brilliant organisations working to prevent youth offending and make their communities a safer place. We are committed to building great partnerships that can make a lasting difference to young people’s lives and I am delighted that this will be the first partnership of many.”

Ruth Davison, Interim Chief Executive at Comic Relief, said:“I am so excited to announce this fantastic £6m partnership with the Youth Endowment Fund.  Together we will fund programmes that steer young people away from crime and help build key information on youth crime prevention.”

 

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NOTES TO EDITORS

For media interviews, please contact: Matt Shaw, Senior Communications Manager at the Youth Endowment Fund on: matthew.shaw@impetus.org.uk ; 07414 405031 / 020 3474 1032.

  • The Youth Endowment Fund was established to help ensure that children most at risk of being drawn into crime and violence get the best possible support, as early as possible.
  • The Youth Endowment Fund is an independent charitable trust. It is run by Impetus, a charity focused on transforming the lives of disadvantaged young people, in partnership with the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) and Social Investment Business.

The partnership combines Impetus’ expertise of building high impact charities and programmes, EIF’s knowledge of how to intervene early to improve outcomes for children, and Social Investment Business’ experience of managing and evaluating large scale grant programmes, to create a bold new model to tackle youth offending.

 

About Sport Relief 

Sport Relief returns on Friday 13th March, bringing the UK together to get active and raise life changing amounts of money through the power of sport. The money raised by Sport Relief supports people living incredibly tough lives in the UK and around the world by tackling issues such as homelessness, domestic abuse, mental health stigma and poverty.

 

Comic Relief created the first ever Sport Relief in 2002, and since then, eight Sport Reliefs have raised over £378 million. For more information about Sport Relief, please visit www.sportrelief.com.

Sport Relief is an initiative of Comic Relief. Comic Relief is the trading name of Charity Projects, a registered charity in England and Wales (326568) and Scotland (SC039730), which is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (01806414). Registered address: 89 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TP.

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About Comic Relief

Comic Relief is a UK charity with a simple purpose -to create a just world, free from poverty. Comic Relief does this by funding and investing in amazing organisations across the UK and around the world to tackle some of the key issues of our time. Since 1985, Comic Relief has raised over £1.3 billion. That money has helped, and is helping, to improve countless lives. For information about Comic Relief and the work it carries out, please visit www.comicrelief.com. Comic Relief, registered charity 326568 (England/Wales); SC039730 (Scotland)