Calling all youth sector charities and social impact organisations! Would you like to take part in a funded project, working alongside a trusted digital partner to develop an innovative digital solution designed to help boost social cohesion among young people? Along the way, you'll learn a host of valuable skills, forge new relationships - and be at the forefront of shaping technologies that drive progress within your organisation and the wider youth sector. Interested? Read on!
What is the Youth Sector Innovation Incubator?
CAST is joining forces with NCS to set up three projects, or 'Youth Sector Innovation Incubators', each tackling a unique challenge, with the ultimate aim of creating four innovative digital solutions to boost social cohesion among young people.
All three Innovation Incubators will get to develop at least one idea. After some research and testing, there will be the opportunity for the Incubators to bid for a unique additional pot of funding to develop a second idea that has tested well - making four digital solutions in total.
For each Innovation Incubator, we are funding three charity or civil society organisations working in that area to come together with a digital partner to explore solutions using digital, data and design. They'll work as a close-knit team—involving young people throughout—to create a prototype or Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Eligibility criteria:
Applicants to the programme will need to be an incorporated organisation which serves communities within England and which is either: a registered, exempt, or excepted charity, a Community Interest Company or Community Benefit Society or a social enterprise. Full eligibility criteria can be found in the programme guidelines.
What are the challenge areas?
There are three challenge areas: 1: Creating live online experiences for ‘The Reflectors’; 2: Young people and AI and 3: Post-programme self-reflection and continued practice.
Applicants for the third challenge area will need to be a current NCS partner, but the first two challenge areas are open to all youth sector charities, CICs, Community Benefit Societies and social enterprises across England. Scroll down this page for information on each challenge, or select the relevant button below.
Why take part?
- You’ll receive a grant of up to £7,300 to be part of designing an approach or solution which has a meaningful impact on the sector you work in, and the communities you support. The grant will facilitate your organisation to attend and work on the programme over a 5 month period.
- The programme will take the form of a structured design course, providing a hands-on opportunity to learn new skills and ways of working to take back into your organisation. All sessions will be delivered online.
- There will be an opportunity to work with a network of experts and like-minded peers in a facilitated community of practice.
- At the end of the programme there will be an opportunity to shape how the prototype or MVP product develops, including where it ‘lives’ longer term.
How to apply
- Firstly read the programme guidelines to check if your organisation is eligible to apply and has the availability to engage with the programme.
- If you are eligible, then complete our application form by 6pm on Thursday 19th September 2024.
- To find out more about the programme, you can watch the video of our Q&A webinar (recorded on 12th September). Here's a write-up of the questions asked and answers at the session.
Key dates
- Open for charity applications: Monday 9th September to 6pm Thursday 19th September
- Q&A webinar: Thursday 12th September 12:00-13:00 (watch the recording)
- Applications reviewed: 20th & 23rd September
- Short interviews: 25th & 26th September
- Decision to charities: by 30th September
- Onboarding: 14th October-1st November
- Programme welcome session: 17th October 10:00-11:30
- Programme dates: 4th November to 31st March 2025
We've created a visual timeline of the programme here with rough dates for key activities.
If you have any questions and would like to speak to someone about your application, please contact Tori, our Head of Digital Practice at [email protected].
If you’re not able to apply for the grant, but have relevant expertise in one of the challenge areas, we’d still love to hear from you through a 20 minute online consultation. We’ll ask you to contribute your insight and experience of the youth sector, and feed it into the Innovation Incubators so that they can consider it as part of their projects. Register your interest here.
Challenge 1: Creating live online experiences for ‘The Reflectors’
The full challenge statement:
How might we create live online experiences that engage young people who tend to avoid in-person programmes and activities because they are easily overwhelmed by meeting new people and trying new things, and are more likely to be introverted. Our goal is to use the digital space to overcome this, and create an increased sense of connection with other young people, in a way that mirrors and maintains team-building of in-person programmes and increases the likelihood of further engagement in in-person youth programmes
The context:
We know that in-person youth programmes aren’t for everybody. ‘The Reflectors’ are one of the young people personas that NCS has identified, that other organisations will surely recognise in their own cohorts.
These young people are naturally introverted and feel overwhelmed by meeting new people and trying new things. However they know they need to push themselves out of their comfort zone, and want to overcome their fears.
They’re interested in personal development, and like the idea of discovering new skills on the programme, but find the pressure of schools and exams exhausting, so holidays are usually reserved as a time to relax.
How might we create live online experiences that engage young people who tend to avoid in-person programs and activities because they are easily overwhelmed by meeting new people and trying new things, and are more likely to be introverted. Our goal is to use the digital space to overcome this, and create an increased sense of connection with other young people, in a way that mirrors and maintains teambuilding of in-person programmes and increases the likelihood of further engagement in in-person youth programmes
The approach
The programme will follow a three step approach to structure the design process:
Throughout the programme, you might take part in the following activities:
- Research – reading, interviews, mapping, workshops, as a way to ask questions, discover knowledge, refine ideas, scope out potential
- Identifying and building partnerships to develop community tech
- Spending time consulting with different experts
- Prototyping, testing and experimenting
If you’re not familiar with some of these tasks, don’t worry - you’ll be supported by your digital partner and CAST to learn about them and put them into practice.
Outcomes:
Part of the Innovation Incubator work will be to identify and develop a Monitoring and Evaluation plan for the prototype or MVP created during the project. Outcomes will align strategically with the Social Cohesion outcomes that NCS work towards. Outcomes in bold are key outcome areas for this particular challenge:
- Connection
- Confidence
- Capability
- Citizenship
Ideal applicants:
We are looking for three organisations with expertise in this area, or good connections with young people who might be described as 'The Reflectors' to join a funded opportunity to work collaboratively with a digital partner over a 20 week project.
Challenge 2: Young people and AI
The full challenge statement:
How might we support young people to better understand, and examine how they use and engage with, generative AI; with a view of increasing their confidence and enabling them to become thoughtful makers and critical users of this technology?
The context:
In recent months, generative AI has made an extremely rapid appearance in our daily lives - and although it has presented many positive opportunities in terms of creating efficiencies and increasing impact, it has also understandably created uncertainty and insecurity around the future of work and much debate around the safety and ethics of this new technology. As it continues to evolve, AI will have a huge impact–both positive and negative–on the working lives and prospects of young people. With a growing sense of disenfranchisement with the current state of affairs, it’s important young people feel they have control and a voice in how they engage with generative AI.
The aim of this Innovation Incubator will be to explore how we can help young people to understand what AI can do, how it can affect them and their communities in their day to day lives, and how they can harness the many benefits AI has to offer - supporting them to build an informed and well-rounded outlook on the future of the technology and their own future, too. A longer-term or secondary outcome of this work would be that young people then choose to share this knowledge with their peers and even their communities - thus enabling an even wider group of people to make informed decisions about how they use or don’t use generative AI and enhancing the young person’s sense of citizenship.
The approach
The programme will follow a three step approach to structure the design process:
Throughout the programme, you might take part in the following activities:
- Research – reading, interviews, mapping, workshops, as a way to ask questions, discover knowledge, refine ideas, scope out potential
- Identifying and building partnerships to develop community tech
- Spending time consulting with different experts
- Prototyping, testing and experimenting
If you’re not familiar with some of these tasks, don’t worry - you’ll be supported by your digital partner and CAST to learn about them and put them into practice.
Outcomes:
Part of the Innovation Incubator work will be to identify and develop a Monitoring and Evaluation plan for the prototype or MVP created during the project. Outcomes will align strategically with the Social Cohesion outcomes that NCS work towards. Outcomes in bold are key outcome areas for this particular challenge:
- Connection
- Confidence
- Capability
- Citizenship
Ideal applicants:
We are looking for three organisations with expertise or an interest in generative AI/technology and strong connections to young people to join a funded opportunity to work collaboratively with a digital partner over a 20 week project.
Challenge 3: Post-programme self-reflection and continued practice
The full challenge statement:
How might we embed the learnings that young people have gained from undertaking NCS (residential and/or community) experiences, by prompting, then inspiring them, to both reflect on and to apply what they have learnt, into their everyday lives and to their wider community?
The context:
We know that NCS in-person programmes (both residential and community experiences) improve the social cohesion measures of young people from when they self-report at the end of the experiences. However, gathering data on the longer-term impact of the programme, once the young people are back in their homes and daily lives, is more challenging.
On this Innovation Incubator, we want to explore how we can continue our relationship with young people beyond the duration of our programmes, supporting them to keep reflecting on what they’ve learnt and prompting them to put it into action. The main outcome is that they’ll be able to take small actions to improve their own lives, as well as to contribute in some way to the wider community - creating even greater impact for NCS experiences in the long term.
To achieve this there may be some element of continued peer support or ‘social nudging’ after the programme ends - but this will be explored and validated through conversations with young people.
While this Innovation Incubator will focus on NCS programmes, the ambition is that the learning and the outputs from this Incubator will be applicable to and usable by many other youth sector organisations who run in-person or even online programmes.
The approach:
The programme will follow a three step approach to structure the design process:
Throughout the programme, you might take part in the following activities:
- Research – reading, interviews, mapping, workshops, as a way to ask questions, discover knowledge, refine ideas, scope out potential
- Identifying and building partnerships to develop community tech
- Spending time consulting with different experts
- Prototyping, testing and experimenting
If you’re not familiar with some of these tasks, don’t worry - you’ll be supported by your digital partner and CAST to learn about them and put them into practice.
Outcomes:
Part of the Innovation Incubator work will be to identify and develop a Monitoring and Evaluation plan for the prototype or MVP created during the project. Outcomes will align strategically with the Social Cohesion outcomes that NCS work towards. Outcomes in bold are key outcome areas for this particular challenge:
- Connection
- Confidence
- Capability
- Citizenship
Ideal applicants:
We are looking for three organisations who are current NCS delivery partners and with strong connections to young people to join a funded opportunity to work collaboratively with a digital partner over a 20 week project.