Minority Matters

Minority Matters is a London charity run by a small team whose sole purpose is to work in partnership with communities to promote social inclusion and child safeguarding. 

Objectives

Our objective is to empower young people from isolated communities through a number of engagement projects that empower the parents and inspire the young. We want to ensure young people are able to fulfill their potential.

Engagement Projects

Learning and access to employment

We believe this can be achieved through encouraging the aspirations of the young and giving parents the tools with which they can support their children to succeed through education and access to employment. 

With the money raised we intend to:

- Provide core subjects support during term-time for BAME children 6-18 years old by qualified experienced tutors.
- Self-development; employment & career advice, CV and personal statement support
- Personal growth and development and confidence building
- Cultural events, outings and fun activities during school holidays
- Mentoring, volunteering, internship and work experience support

Child Grooming and Criminal Exploitation

Minority Matters has also been working with children and young people groomed and criminally exploited into running county lines. As a charity working with hard to reach communities, we have unique insights into the loopholes used to target children and young adults from these communities, in order to criminally exploit them. We not only work closely with parents, but advocate for them to ensure their voices are heard by decision-makers. Beyond that, we work hard to change professional misconceptions about child criminal exploitation, which affect the way services are delivered to young victims.

With the money raised we intend to:

- give points of contact for affected families from hard to reach communities
- link families with local authorities for safeguarding support
- report missing children and young people
- join family and community search parties for missing children
- book and arranging prison visits for parents
- act as Appropriate Adult for children and young adults
- raise awareness of child criminal exploitation with parents
- speak at conferences for healthcare providers and other professionals, raising awareness of the issue and giving insights into how it affects hard to reach communities
- build capacity of those working with affected children and young people
- campaign for changes to the law to better protect children and young people against child criminal exploitation
- lobby the police, local authorities and government to end child criminal exploitation

We refuse to accept that children and young people want to be victimised, which is what the accepted narrative about child criminal exploitation points to. No child or young person wants to be enslaved, hurt and criminally exploited.