City Pitch Event
10 October 2013
10 October 2013
On Tuesday 9 October at City Hall six youth groups from across London were each awarded £700 cash funding to help launch their local community projects after pitching them as part of ‘City Pitch’ – a joint initiative with the Santander Foundation and the Mayor’s Fund for London delivered in partnership with London Youth.
The six groups from Dare London, Hackney Quest, St Mary’s Youth Club, The Big Red Button, DOST and Dragon Hall took their proposals in front of a panel which included Deputy Mayor of London – Victoria Borwick; Keith Moor, Trustee of Santander Foundation; Iqbal Wahhab, OBE – Trustee of the Mayor’s Fund for London; Rosie Ferguson – Chief Executive of London Youth, and Rebecca Roper, a young ‘voice’ representing the Mayor’s Fund for London.
The projects pitched by the youth groups covered a wide range of different subject matters including a new mental health app for young people by The Big Red Button; a project looking to bring people of different generations together by DOST; and Hackney Quest's project on bringing together the community through dance and music workshops, aiming to tackle exclusion and negative stereotypes of the borough.
Each of the groups had five minutes to pitch their projects followed by five minutes of questions from the panel members. Teresa Reynolds of Dare London and Hikmatullah Miakhel of Dragon Hall were two of the young people who pitched on the day. (You can hear what they had to say about their experience by clicking on their names.)
The six pitches, which included dancing from Hackney Quest and a spoken word rap by a member of St Mary’s Youth Club, were well received by the panel and they were quick to commend each of the groups on all their hard work and strong presentation skills.
London Youth's Chief Executive, Rosie Ferguson was full of praise for the young participants, as was fellow panel member and Deputy Mayor of London, Victoria Borwick:
“I have been incredibly impressed with the entries we have received for City Pitch, in its first year. These projects are well deserving of this funding, and it is great to see young people inspired to get involved.”
Matthew Patten, Chief Executive of the Mayor’s Fund for London was also immensely impressed with the presentations put forward by the groups saying, “It’s inspirational that these young people have the guts to stand up in front of an experienced panel and speak so passionately about the real needs of their community. City Pitch is a really exciting initiative and to be able to support young people through our partnership with the Santander Foundation, is great.”
Read Rosie's blog about her experience as a panel member for City Pitch here.
