About Integrate UK
Integrate UK is a youth led charity that invests in the skills, passions and talents of marginalised, socio-economically challenged young people to nurture future leaders who promote our vision of a society based on gender and racial equality and community cohesion. Their approach to achieving our ambitious vision is multifold, focussing on tackling the ongoing inequalities associated with race and gender, including access, participation, attainment, discrimination and all forms of violence and abuse against women and girls.
From a small, local voluntary group co-founded in 2009 with a small group of girls who wanted to challenge the taboo around female genital mutilation (FGM), we have grown to a multi award winning charity that engages hundreds of young people in creative and educational projects on issues they identify as affecting their lives. At the same time, we provide platforms for young activists to advocate for themselves and to counter divisive rhetoric outside the echo chamber amongst the audiences that most fear and mistrust them and to foster positive relationships amongst young people from very different backgrounds.
Their young people are agents of change; they lead on all aspects of their project work and identify the issues they wish to address based on their own lived experiences. They make videos that are viewed millions of times. Older youth members use the videos with lesson plans to deliver peer education workshops nationally..
Integrate UK's Challenges
Integrate UK work with young people facing intersections of disadvantage and they rely on funding to continue their work. One of their challenges is securing corporate and private donors so we become less reliant on grants and are better able to diversify our funding.
Integrate UK's Achievements
Integrate UK’s work transforms the prospects of young people from marginalised and disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, changes public opinion, influences policy and practice and ensures schools are better prepared to meet the needs of their Muslim / racialised young people and to address inequalities. Amongst many other achievements including winning prestigious awards, their young people:
• Gain valuable leadership experience from training hundreds of frontline professionals to
recognise the risk of violence and abuse fuelled by gender, race and religious inequalities and
intervene to protect peers at risk;
• Share their messages through sharing their videos, training thousands of young people
across the country on their rights and on equalities, raising awareness of VAWG, harmful
practices, racism, sexual harassment and Islamophobia;
• Embed equalities in the policy and practice of schools and major funders through our
young people participating in the youth council, youth parliament and on funders’ youth
boards;
• Foster positive relationships between minoritised young people and those vulnerable to
right wing ideologies by bringing them together in a nurturing, positive and creative
environment;
• Provide consultation, most recently to Derby City Council and representatives from 9
Derby schools and other front line professionals on how to address the needs of young
people from racially and religiously minoritised communities;
• Represent youth voice in the Home Office VAWG working group.
• Influence public discourse around equalities through interviews, blogs and opinion pieces
in local and national media outlets and for professional bodies.
Integrate UK
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