The Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation Churchill Fellowship to explore alternative organisational and funding models for programs supporting youth at risk

Bernard Shakeshaft, through the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation Churchill Fellowship, travelled to Canada, Italy and the USA, to explore alternative organisational and funding models for programs supporting youth at risk. Bernie is the Founder and Manager of BackTrack Youth Works in Armidale. Bernard’s report highlights the way he has been able to explore alternate organisational and funding models that address multiple and complex needs for disadvantaged young people. He has been able to affirm what works: the program has to be run at no cost to participants, have low costs and high impact, not rely on any one funding source, be conducted in consultation with government, be for the long term based on grassroots community needs with testable and verifiable monitoring and evaluation. The program must work towards generating its own funds. The appropriate skills and strategies need to be distilled so that they might be shared with others and applied in different context over the long haul. The funding net needs to be skilfully cast very wide for this to happen. Through his travels Bernie identified three learning elements: • There are significant commonalities across the successful programs; • Each program has some unique elements that we can learn from; and • Remaining grounded in the needs of the community, being flexible to respond to changes of the participant group, and innovation are key to success. The clarity of purpose process and vision will be invaluable when planning and implementing how he will disseminate these insights. He is now better equipped to help a range of organisations develop and deliver a broader model of youth support that will ensure access to sustainable long term programs that support community needs Australia wide. His highest priority is to share these learnings more broadly. This wil be achieved through a series of presentations, events, public media, and face to face discussions with policy makers and funding providers over the next 12 months and beyond. This experience has validated and helped to consolidate his experience and understandings of what really works with the vulnerable group of young people. It has also pointed the way to how we might develop, change, expand and disseminate what has been learnt at BackTrack. Many of these elements are already part of the program but others need to be supported, strengthened or initiated.