South Tyneside Charity Benefits from Pledge Organisation’s Grant Support

The region’s largest building society has signed the South Tyneside Pledge.

Newcastle Building Society has 31 branches across the North East, Cumbria and North Yorkshire with a branch in South Shields at the Denmark Centre.

Since 2016, the Newcastle Building Society Community Fund at the Community Foundation has provided more than £2.3m of financial support, benefiting local causes through grants and donations.

South Tyneside charity, Bright Futures, is one of the latest beneficiaries receiving a grant of £2,997 from the Newcastle Building Society Community Fund to support its employability programme for young women.

Bright Futures North East works with young women up to the age of 25, to help them tackle challenges such as substance misuse, domestic abuse, unemployment, poor health and wellbeing, sexual abuse and exploitation.

The charity has set up an employability programme, which has been designed to help young women develop the skills, confidence and knowledge they need to find and keep a job.

As part of the programme, each participant is given a tailored support plan that will help them build their confidence, overcome any barriers into work, and helps them study for qualifications.

23 young women have participated in the programme so far, with 15 securing long-term employment and many more going into education.

Bright Futures is now looking to get more local young women involved with the programme.

Dominique Hendry, project manager at Bright Futures, says: “Our programme is designed to offer tailored support to local young women in whatever ways they need and for as long as they need it in order to help them into sustainable, long-term employment.

“We’re already past our initial target for this project and we’re really keen for more local young women to come forward to find out how we might be able to help them achieve their employment goals.

“Getting Newcastle Building Society’s backing has given us the confidence to plan for what we want to achieve over the longer term, while the credibility their involvement provides is helping to open other doors for us.”

For further information about  the Pledge, visit investsouthtyneside.com/why-south-tyneside/south-tyneside-pledge/