UK Youth: EmpowHER
A comprehensive research project on the benefits of youth social action carried out by UK Youth and funded by Spirit of 2012 and the #iwill Fund.
UK Youth’s EmpowHER programme, match funded with the #iwill Fund, provides young women and girls with opportunities to make change in their communities.
To mark the centenary of women’s suffrage, UK Youth’s EmpowHER programme, jointly funded with the #iwill Fund, aims to support young women and girls to use their voices for positive change – just as their predecessors did 100 years ago.
Spirit of 2012 and the #iwill Fund invested £1.3million each in the first phase of the EmpowHER programme, delivered by UK Youth. The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to a £66 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities.
Established in 2018 to mark the centenary of some women being allowed to vote, EmpowHER helps young women and girls lead change in their communities, increase their self-esteem and build wellbeing by providing inclusive and meaningful social action opportunities.
UK Youth deliver face-to-face activity sessions with young women and girls through their network of youth organisations. The sessions focus on themes of individuals’ rights, empowerment and resilience, as well as activities exploring inspirational women in history. The young women and girls are supported to give back to their community through inclusive and meaningful social action opportunities, provided by partner organisations such as the British Red Cross.
EmpowHER addresses the worryingly low levels of wellbeing amongst young women and girls in the UK and supports them to use their voice, be heard and give back to their local communities. To date, almost 2,000 girls and young women have participated in the programme, with 63% reporting improved wellbeing and 68% reporting improved confidence.
In June 2021 Spirit of 2012 awarded a further grant of £500,000 to UK Youth for the EmpowHER Legacy programme. Through this programme, UK Youth will test different approaches in the design and delivery of youth social action projects, explore how to make them sustainable and embed best practice into a bigger network of projects.
The grant funds:
This was added to by an £18,430 underspend from the first phase of EmpowHER which was used for training for delivery partners, translation of the EmpowHER toolkit, and an access fund to support young women and girls facing barriers to participation.