Harehills Youth In Partnership (HYIP) was established in 2004, as a result of community consultations by dedicated community members who wanted to make a real difference for their local community. Since then, we have developed HYIP’s Climb In Education project, which offers young people, aged 8-20 support to achieve their full potential in education and to access employment, whilst being sensitive of their cultural backgrounds.

HYIP run basic I.C.T sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays supported by 2 sessional workers, and a Reading and Writing session on Sunday staffed by a qualified assistant teacher and a sessional worker. One of HYIP’s strengths is that it runs weekend sessions, which is the time when there is not enough alternative provision or things to do for young people, and it provides them with an alternative to anti-social or criminal behaviour. Although these sessions cover Basic I.C.T or literacy skills, there are also opportunities for young people to get help with their homework and also participate in creative youth work activities.

Throughout the sessions with the older age range (13-20s), information is given out about other local services available (e.g. to assist with employment, housing, drug issues, benefits etc), and referrals made according to the young people’s needs. This is part of our work as a Connexions Access Point (an information point for young people funded by: Connexions West Yorkshire).

Equality of Opportunity for All
Although a particular focus of our work is to target Asian young people, our services are open to all young people in the local area HYIP is located in a building, which is fully accessible for disabled people. We have a mixture of male and female volunteers both supporting the sessions with young people and sitting on the management committee, which we believe, helps to attract male and female young people, and gain the support of their families.

Jamil Khan, Development Worker and Project Co-ordinator