10/09/12

By Andrew Holt

The Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG) have been awarded a
lottery grant (£362k) for its Routes2Success Community Role Model Programme.

The grant will be used to recruit a volunteer force of successful black male role models to participate in activities across England aimed at inspiring young black males (11-25 yrs) to reach their full potential in learning, employment and self-employment.

The Routes2Success programme hopes to help improve the following statistics:

Black Caribbean pupils are over three times as likely as white pupils to be permanently excluded from school.

Only 42% of black Caribbean boys achieved 5 GCSEs including maths and English.

Black students make up 13% of students in the Million+ group of universities but only 2% of students in the Russell Group Universities.

The unemployment rate for young black people (16-24 years) is 44.4% compared to 20% for young white people (ONS, 2012).

Poverty: 20% of all children in Britain are living in poverty; 26% of black Caribbean children and 35% of black African children live in poverty.

Ethnic minorities represent 11% of the total population but 40% of those in young offender institutions are from ethnic minorities.

Jeremy Crook OBE, director of BTEG, said: "BTEG welcomes and appreciates this Big Lottery grant. It will be matched with funding from The Monument Trust and this will allow us to help 1200 young black males to reach their full potential over the next three years. In these difficult times for young people and small charities like ours this is great news.

"BTEG carried out a national survey of young males in March to support our application.Their response helped us to win the grant. 80% of these young people believed that not enough was being done to help them succeed in education and employment and 90% said that wanted to hear from successful black males role models."

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