Young Camden Foundation Appoints New Chair of Trustees, Martin Pratt

Dear members,

I am delighted to have been appointed as Young Camden Foundation’s Chair of Trustees, taking over from Fiona Millar who has chaired the board with distinction over the last seven years.

Until last year, I served as Executive Director, Supporting People and the Deputy Chief Executive for the London Borough of Camden, and I have over three decades of experience in the field of children’s services and education.

I myself first joined YCF as a Board Member in 2017, following the establishment of the charity by a joint initiative by Cllr Georgia Gould (then Cabinet Lead for Young People), John Lyon’s Charity and the local children and youth voluntary sector. In that time we have seen a significantly changing and increasingly challenging context for the young beneficiaries our members’ support. Such contexts sharply demonstrate the increased need for infrastructure organisations such as YCF, to support, advocate for and facilitate partnerships for our local sector.

I am proud to have seen the many ways in which our members have responded to those needs, operating in ever more challenging situations, and the ways in which Young Camden Foundation has supported its members. YCF is now in its final year of its 22-25 strategy, and has made significant strides across its key objectives:

• To increase long-term investment in CYP sector in Camden
• To ensure our members have the capacity to deliver high quality and sustainable youth provision
• To enable new cross-sector collaboration between members, partners and supporters
• To help ensure young people feel safe, are listened to and are thriving and achieving their full potential

In 2023 alone, YCF distributed £1.1m to Camden’s children and youth sector (across the Holiday Activities and Food Programme, and YCF’s established small grants programmes), which we estimate supported over 12,500 children and young people in Camden. We also continued partnerships with corporate partners supporting our grants rounds and projects, including Shaftesbury Capital, Land Securities, and Google UK, distributing over £100,000 as part of our Bright Futures Fund, funded by Google. The team also delivered 23 capacity-building, training and networking events for the sector in that time, engaging 70 unique community member organisations, with exciting plans afoot in 2024.

From our delivery of the DfE funded Holiday Activities and Food programme, to our Camden Level Up Youth Work networks, from our Business Partner Programme to our Young Ambassador programme, this is a very exciting time to be working with Young Camden Foundation.

The charity’s achievements also culminated in being chosen to be the Mayor of Camden’s Charity of the Year for 23/24, in recognition of the charity’s contribution to the borough, and the work of our member organisations.

Following our membership review at the end of 2023, Young Camden Foundation now has over 150 community and voluntary sector members, Camden-based charities and not-for-profit organisations, working with Camden’s children and young people. These include youth clubs, community centres, specialist arts and music organisations, SEND specialist organisations, specialist interventions, supplementary schools and out of school settings, and so much more.

The breadth of our membership demonstrates how unique Camden is, in sustaining a diverse voluntary sector working with children and young people in our community, in a challenging national context, and one where demand is increasing. We also firmly believe that some of the most innovative ways of working, some of the most effective interventions and ground-breaking youth work, is happening right here in this community.

The fact that need is increasing is evidenced by many indicators, including the fact that over 1 in 4 children and young people in Camden currently live in poverty (and many members work in wards where that figure is 1 in 2), and we also have a growing number of children and young people being eligible for Free School Meals.

But Camden is also a borough of incredible opportunity, with some of the biggest businesses nationally (and internationally) choosing to headquarter in our community. I am proud to Chair a charity committed to ensuring the opportunities in our borough are more equally spread between Camden’s incredible children and young people, and our the voluntary and community sector that supports them.

I look forward to working with you to take this mission to the next stage..

With best wishes,

Martin Pratt