Envision

Who we are

At Envision, we have a long and proud history of using social action programmes to help young people build their essential skills.
 

What started as four friends wanting to make a difference in their community has grown over the past 20 years to become a national programme empowering thousands of young people to drive change for themselves and their local communities.

It is not acceptable that young people from less advantaged backgrounds too often miss out on the opportunities to build their self-belief and essential skills and confidence needed to succeed in later life... We want to live in a society where all young people have equal opportunities to develop their skills and confidence.

Over the past two years we’ve opened up conversations and reflected on who we want to be as a charity, an employer and as role models for the young people we support. We’ve reviewed our practices, policies and culture, and have made a commitment to share our successes and challenges.

We support less-advantaged young people to develop the essential skills and confidence they need for life and work. 

We work closely with teachers in our partner schools to target the young people who will most benefit from our programmes, including those from low socio-economic backgrounds (for example, those eligible for Free School Meals or 16-19 Bursary) and those identified as having low levels of self-confidence. 

How do we measure and manage impact?

The Envision Essential Skills Framework sits at the heart of our outcomes, our curriculum, and our impact-management systems.

Our young people complete baseline and endline self-evaluation surveys based on the skills statements in our framework, assessing the frequency with which they use each skill so that they can reflect on their progress and we can learn what's working and what's not.

At the midpoint of the programme, after completing their first milestone challenge, young people consider their progress so far and re-set a personal goal for themselves. At the end of the programme, they reflect on their skills development and usage, as well as the development of their confidence and their understanding of meaningful social action. They’re also given the opportunity to provide feedback on programme content.

We continue to stay in touch with our graduates up to 18 months after they leave the Envision programme, monitoring their continuing skills progress and EET (Education, Employment, and Training) outcomes. Over time, we will use this data to learn more about the effectiveness of our programme, to ensure it builds essential skills that go and grow with the young people we serve.