Employment Support for Disadvantaged Young People

Aim

Sport 4 Life UK helps young people aged 11-29 move into sustained education, training and work through sports-themed personal development.

Sport 4 Life UK believes in a level playing field where every young person can create a better future for themselves. We support young people aged 11-29 in the West Midlands who are disadvantaged, at risk of being unemployed or who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). We deliver sports-themed development services which are designed to improve their prospects and help them move into sustained Education, Employment or Training (EET). 

Whilst the origin of S4L as an organisation in 2006 was purely in the delivery of sports for young people in the West Midlands, we have progressed into a model whereby the overriding goal of our services is to improve life skills and employability. We do not subscribe to a ‘sport for sport’s sake’ model. Instead, S4L are committed to delivering tangible outcomes to young people’s lives, using sport as the key tool of engagement to achieve these progressions.

We use sport as a vehicle to engage young people by delivering free, open-access sports sessions in local, safe venues. This initial contact enables us to reach young people in a light-touch approach, building trust before encouraging them to engage more meaningfully in our core services of tailored training and mentoring.

This gives us a continual flow of new beneficiaries into our training and mentoring services and means we can identify individuals who would most benefit from our support. We deliver our core services to young people who are NEET and young people in education but at risk of becoming NEET. S4L’s employability services include accredited qualifications and training, personalised one-to-one mentoring, first-hand interaction with employers and social action projects.

This project successfully funded on 30th January 2023