Zyky helps national youth charity to deliver awards online
UK Youth is a national charity supporting over 750,000 young people throughout the UK - including many from disadvantaged backgrounds - and helping them through non formal educational opportunities to raise their aspirations and realise their potential. With some 7000 youth groups, clubs and projects within its network already, UK Youth was keen to maintain its engagement with young people by widening its accessibility and appeal through the greater use of internet technology - specifically via an extranet Portal designed to provide a central set of resources and tools for young people and improved management information and interaction for UK Youth.
The Portal will allow young people to engage in the UK Youth Achievement Awards process online by helping them complete their award challenges, collect evidence, assess their own development and use it as a vehicle to articulate their achievements, and collaborate with their peers on team challenges as part of their portfolio. The Portal will also support both internal and external moderation and provide UK Youth management with a vehicle for status reporting, assessment and feedback.
UK Youth offer various levels of the Youth Achievement Award; The Youth Challenges are internally certificated and are aimed at young people aged 11 to 14, although they may be appropriate for people older, or even slightly younger. The Bronze to Gold Youth Achievement Awards are aimed at young people who are 14 plus, with the Platinum young leaders award being appropriate for young people of 16 plus. To receive a Youth Achievement Award volunteers also need to complete a log book, and collect evidence.
The Portal and related infrastructure will allow Youth Workers to purchase online 'log books' and provide these to Young People in place of the paper form. The Portal will provide the tools and materials to help young people complete their award challenges, collect evidence, assess their own development and use it as a vehicle to articulate their achievements. Additionally, Young People will be able to collaborate with their peers on Team Challenges as part of their Portfolio. The Portal will support internal and external moderation and will reflect the organisational structure of the Awards in capturing targets and achievements and for reviewing evidence.
The Portal’s core users will be Young People and providers of support and related infrastructure services and will additionally provide up to date management information for funders and policy makers and for capacity planning such as the number of Awards in Progress, Challenges that are not completed, cancelled or inactive and the length of time taken to complete awards.
The UK Youth Portal is intended to provide a central set of resources and tools to support young people whilst they complete their awards and to enable UK Youth to interact more directly with participants over the course of their awards.
As one of three key delivery partners, Zyky has worked to develop the concept for this Portal and is currently engaged on developing further phases prior to anticipated completion by the beginning of 2010.