A YOUTH mentoring project at the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast is one of three Northern Ireland winners in a recent round of funding for youth enter-prise from Ulster Bank’s parent company, RBS.
Under its Inspiring Enterprise programme, RBS is providing £95,000 to Northern Ireland projects as part of £500,000 in grants being allocated each year for three years to organisations across the UK. These are intended to help young people explore enterprise, develop their skills and start-up in business.
Other Northern Ireland projects receiving funding this year are the Work West Enterprise Agency’s Arise project in West Belfast, which has been awarded almost £46,000, and the NXT-GEN-BIZ project, based at Fermanagh Enterprise, which will use just over £20,000 of funding to help 24 young people from the west of Northern Ireland take the next step in becoming entrepreneurs.
The Oh Yeah Music Centre’s Volume Control project works with young people to develop entrepreneurial knowledge and skills in events and music industry enterprise and will receive almost £29,000 from the funding programme. Volume Control aims to reach 14 to 18 year olds from all backgrounds across Belfast and to help graduates from the project aged 18 to 30 to develop their business ideas and plans. Since 2009 it has reached over 4,000 young people in Belfast.
The money will enable 12 participants to develop their business skills by organising events, launching and running their own record label in 2015.
They will then take what they’ve learned into the community to mentor other young people and help organise a conference, aimed to inspire up to 200 more young people to set up their own music enterprises.
Ellvena Graham, head of Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland, said: “We’re thrilled that three local projects are among nine across the UK chosen to benefit from the latest Inspiring Youth Enterprise Grant Funding programme. Their innovative and exciting ideas give young people across Northern Ireland fantastic opportunities to learn about entrepreneurship.
“The winning applications include a wide variety of programmes that will help build, boost and develop the key skills necessary to enable more young people to start up in business.”
Stuart Bailie, director of Oh Yeah said: “RBS Inspiring Youth Enterprise is helping us continue and expand a project which has already helped thousands of young people in Northern Ireland experience working in the music industry and realise their full potential.
“It will provide the team with an office, a key mentor and a dedicated project manager, who will bring in industry professionals and local music entrepreneurs for detailed workshops and one to one mentoring sessions. It will support the co-ordination of four community events and the Youth Industry conference”.