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| Case Studies |
Kick Off with LiteracyOne way of getting people back into learning is to pretend it's something else. Football, for example. Every Wednesday morning at a Birmingham college, between eight and 11 young unemployed people gather to work on a magazine. And in the afternoon, they go to Birmingham City football ground where the club provides coaching. This provides the material which they write about in the magazine. 'If you talk about literacy and numeracy they turn off," says Emma Sykes, the organiser from the charity Fairbridge who looks after them. "But working on the magazine, they are using literacy skills.' The 20-week course runs one day a week - not just in Birmingham, but also in Liverpool, Manchester, Middlesbrough and Newcastle. Organisers are planning a Fairbridge football tournament between these centres. That, they hope, will have the added benefit of breaking down barriers between supporters of rival teams. Fairbridge supports 14-25 year olds who are not in education, training or employment, and who are at risk of dropping out. Some have been excluded from school, been unemployed for a long time or been homeless - and some are involved in criminal activity. The idea is to give them a range of short courses, with sweeteners like the football coaching, so that they can become increasingly involved as their confidence develops. It's certainly helped Mark Rushton. He's 26 and unemployed - he worked as a barman until January this year - but he's been coming to different Fairbridge projects for two years now and he's enthused with the idea of doing volunteer work for Fairbridge. "If it wasn't for this place I'd stay at home all the time," he says. "It gets me active." He enjoys the magazine, too. "It's the first magazine I've done, we're all working as a team to get it done."
NAME: Fairbridge
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