Does Anything Really Change?

Does anything really change? Last week it was discussed in the news whether funding for youth related projects and schemes had actually made a noticeable or quantifiable improvement to the lives of young people or not.

It is hard when you read the headlines over the weekend of murdered teenagers to actually imagine that funding is helping but how do you gauge the national and overall success of a project when you have stories like this to contend with?

No matter how much good is done the news outlets will always highlight sensational and extreme news of the minority of young people committing crime. This will in turn lead people in to thinking that this is what young people are up to across the country.

Although we all hate figures, statistics and having to measure success I think in some cases it is needed. If you as a government are going to invest millions of taxpayers pounds they have to know they are getting a return for their money. It is hard to stop extreme cases like we have seen on the weekend but what needs to be done is to make sure that these stay isolated and minority events, it is when these incidents become the norm is when we have failed. One teenager dieing is far too many but you can’t stop wanting to better or to improve things as we only lose when we stop trying

These events need to remind us that no young person is safe and we all need to be doing are all to make sure every young person leads a safe life. We can’t rely on funding or education to solve the problems we all need to take an active role within our communities to make sure we are all safe.

When every young person has the same access to funding, education and support is when we will be able to judge change properly and see real change on a national basis. Success with young people is only temporary and we can never afford to forget it. That is why we need continual funding and continual monitoring for the improvement of young lives in the UK. Just because a project has been successful for a young person and changed their life it doesn’t necessarily mean that if support was pulled away that they would continue to be a success.

It may seem like nothing changes but it is a much better world than if funding and support was to be taken away from youth projects and programmes. Just remember that just because you may be reading the same headlines every year it doesn’t mean change isn’t being made or happening.

Do you think anything is changing in regards to the success of support for youth related projects and programme? We here at Talented Young People would love to know your views and you can share them by joining in our topic of the week by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=457

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com