The Trustees have prepared this statement following Polly Toynbee’s article in The Guardian of 11 January 2011.
We were pleased to meet Polly and show her round the Salmon Youth Centre on Thursday 6th January and to discuss the current funding challenges. It was great to have such a positive write up about the Centre and our work in a national newspaper.
The new building and its facilities are indeed of a very high standard and provide our local young people with plenty of opportunities for discovering new experiences and finding out what they are good at, so they can live fulfilled lives and make a contribution to society – all in the context of voluntary youth work.
We are particularly pleased with our work with young volunteers, two of whom met Polly and talked with on her visit – Lorelle and Paris, both of whom had attended the Club since they were six years old and had formed lasting relationships with our staff.
In relation to the funding position, the Trustees were always aware that five main streams of funding would expire in March 2011 and that they were unlikely to be replaced 100%. They represented a ‘high water mark’ while we established ourselves on a sustainable basis in our new building. The recession, the huge national debt and the large deficit in public finances always meant that it would be very difficult to find replacement funding – from public, charitable, corporate or private sources. Therefore, in September 2010, the Trustees approved a slimmed down structure and started fundraising towards that. Some staff have taken redundancy, but in all cases, have found other things to do. None had been with us more than four years as paid staff. We have already had some success with new fundraising. Currently we are finalising substantial applications to three Government/Lottery sources and four private charitable sources and we are moderately hopeful of achieving the necessary funding for the revised staff structure of 13-16 for 2011/12 and beyond, provided these applications are successful. Continual fundraising, often for fixed term funding, is a fact of life for many charitable, voluntary and community organisations.
Just to correct a couple of factual inaccuracies in Polly’s article – we have 1,700 registered club members, with about 800 ‘visits’ a week to the Centre (a member may ‘visit’ more than once). We have not had any corporate volunteers painting walls that don’t need painting – we have had some positive experiences of partnership with organisations from the City and are hopeful of developing longer - term relationships with some of them. Much youth work in the United States is funded through local businesses, as our Executive Director has seen for himself.
Simon Hughes, as our local MP, has long been an active supporter of our work, as he is of many voluntary and community organisations in his constituency. We are very grateful for this support. We look forward to the continuing support of Simon, Polly, Southwark Council and others, as we seek to give the best opportunities to our young people in these very challenging times.
