Somerset Rural Youth Project, abbreviated SRYP, was incorporated in the fiscal 1997. During this period, it was registered as a charity organization. The organization was set up to reach out to the youths whose age ranged from 11 years to 25 years. According to Heather Black, the chief executive of SRYP, this project was purposely intended to utilize the talents of young people in helping other youths.
The SRYP was equally intended to contribute towards the development and growth of Somerset rural. In fact, the Youth Work Charity dubbed as Somerset Rural Youth Project had the vision of uplifting young people.
In Somerset, the youths are losing their sense of belonging, but SRYP was instituted to help such people to work willingly towards contributing to a better future. Thus, this organization prepares a viable future for the youths. SRYP endeavors to offer Somerset youths a future that is unlimited by access to services and opportunities.
The Somerset Rural Youth Project is quite different from other rivalry organizations. It provides the standard youth work, and other activities that can be accessed by everybody who is a teenager. Some of the business activities conducted by SRYP include offering advice to the youths concerning alcohol and drugs, various volunteering opportunities, social, guidance, support and sporting activities as well as health workshops.
The services provided by SRYP are distinctive in nature and cannot be compared to those offered by other rival organizations. For example, this organization delivers recreational, educational, economic, social, and business activities in a manner, which suits the rustic places.
Having been in operation for more than ten years now, the Somerset Rural Youth Project has shown a remarkable achievement record. It appears both as a service provider and as approaches developer. The Somerset project has quite a number of experienced staffs.
It receives significant aid from voluntary, private, and public sector organizations. Such extensive support from donors makes a pool of Somerset experienced staffs to be well positioned in sharing knowledge as well as assisting other people in developing and applying methods that Somerset pioneers.
From the case, SRYP is similar to any other project tailored towards assisting young people. The SRYP offers guidance, support, and advice on sports activities, training, employment, budgeting, and health. Furthermore, SRYP provides particular support designed to facilitate and assist the youths get to college, and work stations.
Such forms of assistance provided by SRYP also help young people in gaining the requisite expertise and skills directly via the training program called The Rustic Skills Workshop. The four teams established to handle SRYP matters have developed greater interests and approaches to ensure good practices. The teams are out to realize the excellence journey.
Given that, the SRYP mainly concerns testing and innovation, the staffs use a variety of strategies to reach out to the Somerset youths and deliver appropriate services. The means used to contact the inaccessible young people include mobile youth club vans, special designs of trailers, and minibuses. All these means of transport are designed to carry equipment and staffs to the meeting places, seminar rooms, and mobile coffee bars.
However, in trying to assist Somerset youths to be like other people who live in the urban centers, transport has always posed considerable challenges to SRYP teams.
Despite the challenges, SRYP offer moped loan schemes to help alleviate some of the encountered difficulties. Moped loan scheme (MLS) is amongst the most demanded services that SRYP offers to the Somerset youths. The price of MLS is highly subsidized for the youths who need economical means of transportation.
Other means of reaching out and informing the Somerset rustic youths is through creating stronger community links. SRYP currently uses activities such as the re-establishment of local churches into societal centers. On the other hand, the Rural Employment and Learning (REAL) team is responsible for the provision of practical assistance to the youths aged between 16 years and 25 years who actively seek for employment opportunities.
Green activities is another context drawn on by SRYP to make the youths take part in the useful outdoor activities namely conservation, wildlife, environment, and restoration.
Finally, to accomplish its excellence journey, the Somerset Rural Youth Project is wide-ranging both in its geographical coverage, context, and in scope. The project has achieved various objectives, and after ten years in operation, the number of supporters and partners has equally increased.
For instance, the total number of SRYP part-time and full time working staffs is 75. Annually, the SRYP teams reach out to over 2,000 youths while funds accrue from nearly 50 sources. These make SRYP to be amongst the largest organizations endowed with profound administration burden.
Initially, the organization received funds or financial support from only two sources, RDC (Rural Development Commission) and the Country Council. The funding arrangements have experienced considerable changes, and the impacts from these changes are great.
Somerset Rural Youth Project uses various strategies to pursue its quality or excellence journey. From the time the project was instigated, the teams have developed an approach of good practice. There are greater potentials and interests developed by team members. Everything that surrounds the Somerset Rural Youth Project revolves around testing and innovating.
The staffs are often given confidence and support in order to develop their skills and interests towards benefiting the youths. To realize these, the project members have organized themselves in various groups to complete the journey.
For instance, four mobile teams work across Somerset Rural and throughout the country. These teams use minibuses that are customized for the effortless transport to seminar rooms, meetings, and mobile coffee bars. Besides, there are trailers specifically designed and manufactured to take various equipment and tools to the rural areas.
The SRYP staffs usually focus on particular work areas. To accomplish their quality journey, the work of the teams recently concentrated on community and economic programs.
The community program
Every team in the community program covers a geological area. In fact, each of the four teams is obligated to work on particular themes reflecting the interests and strengths of team members. The adopted models include:
Advice on Health education: The staffs working for SRYP recruit and train youths to become peer mentors and instructors. Such volunteers attend classes that offer courses on residential issues where they cover child listening, communication, and protection skills.
The courses are offered over the weekends. The volunteers are also taught about the responsibility of various agencies, as well as when and how to refer individuals and groups to such agencies for assistance.
Reducing criminal activities: SRYP staffs work closely with agencies and youths including education colleges and Safer Sedgemoor Partnership. With the assistance from these groups, the SRYP staffs develop various approaches that can be used to reduce crime in the rural areas.
The undertaken activities range from the involvement of the youths to investigate how crime can be reduced to removing graffiti and repairing bus shelters. The teams offer advice on cookery, sexual health, independent living, moped and car maintenance, personal finance, and substance abuse.
Sports development: SRYP has an Activity and Sports Mentoring Project that is meant to encourage the youths to learn about hale and hearty existence as well as participate in relaxing sports activities. The activities help the youths to work with communities that participate in field events, to enhance societal relations, and to develop the decision-making skills of young people.
Creative Arts: Somerset Rural Youth Project has art-based activities meant to assist the youths in overcoming any difficulties they encounter. SRYP staffs visit artists in their work areas and take part in artistic activities. This helps Somerset to reach and help youths who never realized that they had creative talents. SRYP positively channels these youths to carry out activities for their personal benefits.
The economic program
This program involves the participation of the four SYRP teams. The SRYP teams offer numerous support that are intended to assist the youths in gaining access to training and employment or to overcome problems that each person encounters. This program includes the following modeled projects:
The rurality.com: This scheme takes mobile satellite dishes, mobile phones equipped with infrared devices, and laptops to the youths living in the most rustic areas.
Young people using this equipment are able to acquire ICT skills and access the internet. Through this project, the SRYP have the chance to incorporate the youths in their work, and offer further guidance, advice, and information. The organization is currently developing a website to be used by the youths.
“Me in My Ex-moor” (MIME): This project helps the youths from Ex-moor schools to record the current personal life experiences and reflections, interviews with grown-ups concerning life, as well as vision and in sound. Such information could be used in future by the youths who grow up in the rustic places.
The REAL (Rural Employment and Learning) SRYP team look for the unreachable youths from the smallest communities found in Somerset to offer them guidance and advice. Therefore, since this team works intimately with Job Centre Plus and Connexions colleagues, it is strategically positioned to refer the youths to other organizations when it is deemed appropriate.
In the ‘Wheels to Work’ national program, the SRYP offers the Moped Loan Scheme. This scheme has provided the needed independence to over 340 youths to attend college or work where they prefer.
The project faces many challenges accruing from Local Area Agreements, Children Trust Progress, and Defras Rural Modernizing Delivery work. It has unluckily schemed none deliberate distrust to the future expectations of the project. Attached to this, challenges come from organizations offering potential financial support. They are incapable of financing the project due to their need for demonstrating monetary value.
The challenge results from comparative costs incurred by urban projects to the high per capita costs earned in rural areas. The project experiences difficulties at this time. Black Heather remarks that the strain related to Rural Proofing process is becoming extinct, and the respect in liberation of urban services is costly.
Even though the general story about SRYP encourages, concerns are arising on its financial, operational, and political systems. The project and its supporters work in these schemes. They do not allow the testing of approaches and provide relatively shorter time for the provision of services. Hence, this hinders the wide adoption of effectively proven approaches as standard practices.
Change is viewed as a personal benefit despite the fact that it is painful, natural, and inevitable. Learning and experiences in the recent years are not lost if the work of the project is to be entirely absorbed into another organization. In fact, it is unlikely to happen in Somerset Rural Youth Project as the organization apprehends.
Thus, the largest part of the youth project will have to close up in the contemporary competitive environment. Some of this project’s models would be discontinued. For instance, the Moped Loan Scheme will not be continuing regardless of how moneymaking and triumphant it has demonstrated to be.
The project continuation is the most important purpose of the SRYP. The Somerset Rural Youth Project workforce squanders a lot of time. Approximately, twenty-five percent on average time spent is used on preparing proposals, and presenting progress reports to institutions that is financially supporting them.
Though this is necessary, it consumes a lot of time. Therefore, the quantity of time used up by personnel in working with the youthful populace is condensed.
Additionally, there is reduction in the self-determination to the examination of new-fangled dreams in the project. In fact, the need to ensure that the objectives of fund donors to SRYP are achieved is the root cause of this problem. The project, in a number of ways has now turned out to be less innovative.
Conversely, SRYP has continued to raise a lot of money and developed numerous ways of operating in the company of youths. The project’s expectations are not totally protected and there is a complex financial state of affairs. Despite this, the SRYP without any doubt remains an example of high-quality practice. The project suffers in its ability to share out this best practice everywhere.
They experience bottlenecks in helping others adapt to its proven ways of work nationally. It is also irrefutable that a mixture in policy and monetary constraint are in suspicion and out of power of the associates as well as the project.
The natural history of work in the project as well as the present political and financial atmosphere makes the project to encounter difficulty in achieving its financial security.
Besides, it is difficult for the SRYP to visualize or spotlight on how its rural youths will fare on with the project in the near future. According to Clitheroe David, the project aims at flourishing particularly in the pastoral regions of the country where modest aid can be accounted for and felt.
Competition from other government services blows off the work of Somerset Rural Youth Project. It cannot have rest on its laurels in order for its services delivery to be appreciated by the Somerset community. In fact, the government has built its Big Society vision, thus creating more struggles in the markets.
Other minor local charities with small amount expenses, also deliver home services thus offering opposition to SRYP. Generally, the Somerset Rural Youth Project should continue with its operations even though the market is getting very competitive and the vessel becomes undersized.
The existence Somerset Rural Youth Project is roughly ten years in approximation. Almost fifteen thousand youths from the Somerset community have worked for the group. Among them are the professional players working in movable projects. They are equipped with designed vehicles and trailers to cover a special range of services.
These services range from trade and industry to societal services offered to Somerset community youths with less than three thousand residents. The Somerset Rural Youth Project management works with many able associate organizations. The Somerset project is effective due to the project environment and the mobility to get in touch with youthful group in ways that are unused to many legislative bodies.
Although this project has proved its worth like other rival organization projects, its imminent life is self-doubting. Indeed, NRYP has demonstrated first-class practice and its looms are matching well in the other parts of the nation. Moreover, the project is supported nationally, regionally, and locally yet its existence remains unsecure.
Due to the impending challenges, various strategies have been set up by the organization to meet its future demands and further explore the journey for excellence. To start with, a plan to start the ball rolling was put in place by the project. The first assessment for deploying the charity has been instituted. The charity has the eventual aim of developing the project into something similar to a business.
The BQF diverse membership provides a major bonus to the Somerset Rural Youth Project. The SRYP members bank their hopes in networking events and seminars that supply them with extra foods for thought to further their development. The group also ground breaks into dissimilar environs to discover whether they can be challenged. For this reason, they think about the project from the business point of view.
Usually, project excellence comes through self-assessment done by the organizations. The youth project conducts yearly evaluation to keep on charming resources from donors. This allows them to scrutinize the effectively finished activities and to gain knowledge on marketing competition trends.
Furthermore, the Somerset Rural Youth Project has discovered five long-term charitable trust plans in business. It has initially finished the most recent round of longitudinal schoolwork at Exeter University, which has attracted the youth desires. In this institution, the aid organization takes the leading role in all market positioning strategies.
Further, it has gained respect in C2E accreditation as an outside indicator of loyalty to achieve excellence. In addition to that, to assist in marketing and promotion of services, the project has hired business development managers.
The initiation of an important training constrain has been termed to be extraordinary. NRYP has aimed at reaching and encouraging the youthful project staffs to take extra-premeditated approach to those services being rendered.
Finally, the organization can look for additional sources of funds to subsidize services offered to Somerset youths. Most young people from the rustic community hardly have any capital to initiate personal projects. Therefore, these additional funds can be used to jumpstart income generating projects for such category of youth. The quality of excellence is evident in the delivery of services.
The SRYP employs the youths who are currently delivering total results to customers. The employees’ training on how to consider and successfully manage resources is guaranteed by the project, thus its quality. It has enabled the organization to propel towards excellence in that there is efficiency.
In SRYP, efficiency in the field of service delivery ensures the attraction of additional funds from multiple sources. Overall, modernism has fostered the growth of SRYP. Through innovative learning, the human resource has continued to extend the delivery of esteemed services to Somerset communities.