Welcome to the latest round up of Impetus news. We have been very busy since the start of the year, and we’re excited to share what we’ve been up to…

Meet the four new charities just added to our portfolio • An independent evaluation that proves the impact of our partner Resurgo’s employment programme • Making the case for social and emotional learning in schools • Register for the 2023 Impetus Triathlon!

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Welcome to four new charity partners

At the last open grant round for our Connect Fund, (which aims to help decrease the employment gap faced by young people from ethnic minority, disadvantaged backgrounds), we received more than 160 applications to become an Impetus charity partner.

At the start of the month we welcomed the four successful charities - Babbasa, Generation UK, IMO Charity and Sister System.

In backing these charities, Impetus will be supporting four new impact-led organisations who support young people from both ethnic minority and socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds into work. Together, these charities are on course to support over 5,500 young people this year.

We’re excited to start working with these organisations. All four bring real understanding, commitment and empathy working with this demographic - we will work shoulder-to-shoulder with them, helping them become stronger organisations that can transform the lives of more young people.

- Sebastien Ergas, Portfolio Director, Impetus

Real impact on young people’s employment chances

As a long-term funder of Resurgo, we were really excited to read the results of the evaluation of their impact by the new Department of Work and Pensions Employment Datalab evaluation service.

The Datalab found that Resurgo’s award winning Spear programme reduces the chances of young people being out of work after a year by 20%.

Read more about it in their CEO Jo Rice’s blog. Impetus’ senior policy advisor Phoebe also wrote about why interventions like these matter for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds:

The Government should pay attention to these results: young people deserve access to programmes that work, and taxpayers should know that their cash is being spent on well-evidenced interventions.

- Phoebe Arslanagic-Wakefield, Senior Policy Advisor, Impetus

Getting young people ready to learn

At Impetus we believe that before a young person is ready to succeed at school, they must be ready to learn, and in September we added three new charities to our portfolio – all of them working to develop social and emotional learning skills in young people to help improve their attainment at school.

Shortly afterwards we published a new State of the Nation report with the Centre for Education and Youth, setting out what’s happening in practice in this area and where we can go next. We debated the issues raised in the report at a roundtable event for practitioners and policy makers with an interest in social and emotional learning.

To find out more about our thinking, read our OpEd piece in the Times Educational Supplement, which includes results from a survey we conducted with Teacher Tapp finding that 92% of teachers believe that these skills are crucial for attainment in school.

If we are to truly understand the potential of investing in SEL alongside academic learning, we need to delve into these issues, find the common threads and look further into what works.

- Steve Haines, Director of Public Affairs, Impetus

Swim, cycle, run for Impetus

The 2023 Impetus Triathlon will take place on 16 September, at Dorney Lake in Windsor and registration is now open!

Whether you want to take part as an individual or a team, a Sprint distance or a full Olympic challenge, it’s the perfect team building day. It’s also a fun day out for all the family with plenty of non-sporting entertainment like the Scootathlon, a kid’s tent and refreshment stands.