Our 2022-23 City of Social Action Grantees

The City of Social Action Grants for Young People are focused on increasing quality opportunities for young people to take part in and lead their own social action projects. Pot 1 consists of grants of up to £1000 for projects which are led by young people and make a positive difference to children, young people and communities. Pot 2 consists of grants of £5000-£7000 for projects by organisations that support increasing the waist that children and young people can have a say in an existing organisation or partnership.

Here is a list of our Pot 1 and Pot 2 grantees below, with a description of what their projects are:

Pot 1

MaD Theatre Company

Young drama leader Jake is writing and directing a play that addresses hate crime. He is planning to work on the project with the young people that attend the MaD Theatre's Saturday morning group at Manchester Communications Academy, and have young people perform the play.

New Wave Skate Manchester

New Wave Manchester currently holds monthly queer skateboard and rollerskate sessions at Projekts MCR for LGBT folk of all ages. These sessions run for 3 hours, and include optional beginner’s coaching, skate workshops, and queer skate ‘hosts’ to make the young people feel more welcome. They offer fully funded places to charities that work with queer young people such as Q42.

Pupil Media Team - Burnage Academy for Boys

The Pupil Media Team from Burnage Academy for boys have been using their platform to discuss important issues and raise awareness, for example, mental health. They want to do more of this independently from their school and create their own vlog series that covers different themes and features a variety of guests.

Rekindling the Community - Rekindle School

Rekindle is a youth-led supplementary school, empowering working class young people to rediscover their love for learning, while becoming confident and pro-active within their own communities. Their young people would like to put on a community event to engage others in Hulme and Moss Side. They want to encourage young people and families in the local area to get to know others with whom they might not have interacted before. There will be games, art activities, face painting, music and food, with local food vendors catering.

MGTYouth

The first youth-led project will be a Prom night called ‘Class of 2020’ for all the school leavers that left in the year of lockdown led by talented young people of MGTY who are performers, singers, poets and artists. The second project will be a blog where a group of young people speak to entrepreneurs/business owners within the community to learn more about what they do, how they did it, and get advice for fellow young people making decisions about their own career. They hope it will inspire more young people to make positive decisions about their career by uploading and promoting the blogs on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Pot 2

Rekindling Manchester - Rekindle School

Rekindle is a youth-led supplementary school, empowering young working class young people (aged 11-13) to rediscover their love for learning, while becoming confident and pro-active within their own communities. Their aim is to reintroduce Rekindle to 5 new communities to explore their local food cultures. They will support their young people to confidently travel and investigate a variety of independent food establishments throughout the Manchester City region. The young people will also be supported in meeting, interviewing & photographing individuals from a wide range of diverse backgrounds - learning about their culture and hearing their vision of a more culturally-connected Manchester.

GMYN Youth Participation Group

GMYN is using COSA funding for their Youth Participation Group which directly contributes to GMYN’s day-to-day operations and strategic decision-making. Acting as a steering group, members ensure that young people (YP) are co-designing GMYN’s programmes and that they are meeting the current and emerging needs YP are facing. The group delivers four youth-led social action campaigns each year raising awareness of prevalent issues through social media and community engagement. COSA Funding will enable GMYN to make youth-voice and leadership even more central to our internal work and strengthen their capacity to support YP to influence positive change.

Digital Dialogue - The Politics Project

Over the last few months The Politics Project have supported young people across Manchester to have discussions with local leaders about their health and wellbeing as part of the #BeeWell programme. To continue to support the young people to develop their ideas, they would like to hold a young person-led Youth Democracy Day, which will bring together young people from across Manchester for an in-person event. The event will enable young people to work together to build on the ideas they discussed in their #BeeWell sessions by working with local leaders and campaigners to design and implement real solutions.

Stay tuned for updates on these projects!