Creative Cohesion West Midland ‘s Youth Employment and Empowerment project (YEES) was created to encourage and empower deprived and isolated vulnerable young people and adults has overcome so many barriers and bridges to get diverse groups to engage, involve and participate in workshops, learning activities and join fun team sports games. This has been a great success in building respect, tolerance and compromises between young people from diverse heritages to join empowerment workshops, take part in play, learnand develop their social skills. The project was delivered in Foleshill, one of the most deprived areas of Coventry.
The project was able to work with young adult parent women who wanted to develop their own learning and skills to inspire their children, make new friends, share their experiences and learn about other people’s cultures. One session which focused on how can Foleshill’s diverse communities work better featured women from Syria, Bengali, Pakistani, Indian, Kashmiri, Latvian heritages.
This project has developed opportunities for the young people and adults to share their experiences and life in Foleshill through questionnaires, focus group sessions and during sports and wellbeing sessions. We have started to build partnerships and networks with organisations so we can build on this initiativeso groups can access local facilities and attend training and courses in employment and join in activities building confidence and empowerment.