Future You

Helping young people back into education, employment and training.

What is it?

Future You from the We're Altogether Better Group is an innovative adaption of their award-winning Cyber Mentors programme, providing both on and offline mentoring for 14-25 year olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) but want to improve their prospects of getting back into work or learning.

Future You uses a safe social networking model so that young people who are NEET, or who are at risk of becoming so, can access to a supportive network of trained mentors who have been in similar circumstances and are able to share their experiences. Future You Mentors are trained young people from across the UK, which gives them the opportunity to develop and use soft skills to support their peers. The service is underpinned by qualified counsellors and advisors who are on hand to provide more structured support to those who need it most.

By helping other young people who may be in the same or similar circumstances, Future You Mentors have the opportunity to make a real difference, which has a significant and positive effect on the well-being, confidence, soft skills, life chances and aspirations of the mentors themselves and those being mentored.

How the idea developed

Future You was developed in partnership with Kent County Council's Poverty Innovation Pilot and the team also worked with the local authorities in Greenwich, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth, Newham and Waltham Forest, and voluntary sector organisations including: Barnados, Catch 22, Remploy, Street League, Mencap and The Prince's Trust to help design the right approach. 

Early activity focussed on adapting the Cyber Mentors platform so that it had the same look and feel. However alongside the more familiar functionality, a virtual library was added and users can comment on, rate, tag and recommend content. It was also clear young people wanted a mobile version of the site as this offered greater flexibility and would be easier to access.

The Future You online model means a small number of core professionals can reach much higher numbers of young people in a more efficient manner; while the use of volunteer mentors provides a network of underlying support that acts as an effective triage and signposting system. This has allowed Beat Bullying to massively scale up their business model.

The project was one of the programmes Nesta supported through Reboot and received £252,000 to develop a working prototype during the first phase of the programme and then start to scale the platform in its second phase. 

Latest news (as at 20 August 2012) 

They team have recently secured a £1.3million grant from the Social Action Fund to allow them to transition a new social action charity 'We're Altogether Better' which will house Future You, Cyber Mentors and a number of other platforms that use the same technology. They are also bringing a new social enterprise to market called 'We Are Cosmo' that will market the software that sits behind all of their platforms.

Want to know more? 

Charles Bosher, Director of Business Development - charles.bosher@beatbullying.org