BANGLADESH YOUTH AND CULTURAL SHOMITI

Bangladesh Youth & Cultural Shomiti (BYCS) was founded in 1974. It is based in the Highfields inner city area of Leicester in the East Midlands. Over 70% of Leicester's Bangladeshi community lives in the vicinity of BYCS's base. It provides a range of Educational, Cultural, Social and Leisure activities to a wide range of people who live in this area, which suffers from high unemployment and social deprivation.

BYCS is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee with no share capital. It is managed by a management board made up of people from the local Bangladeshi community who are elected every 3 years. It employs 4 full-time & 20 part-time staff and sessional staff.

OCR accredited Computer Courses in the new UK Online centre.
OCR accredited English Language & Basic Skills Courses.
CIEH Accredited Food Hygiene and Health & Safety courses e.g. Foundation Food Hygiene, Foundation Health & Safety, Stress Awareness and Risk Assessment etc.
Other Key Skills e.g. Employment Skills, Essential Business Skills, Essentials of Employment Laws, Essentials of Food Laws, Basic Book Keeping Accounting etc.
Advice, Information & Support about Education and Career issues.
Out of school hours learning for secondary school children in a supportive environment to achieve a minimum of 5 GCSE's
CULTURAL
Bengali Mother Tongue Teaching up to G.C.S.E. level.
Development of Exhibitions e.g. The 'Confluence' exhibition celebrating the works of Nazrul & Tagore, acclaimed Bengali poets.

Advice & Support on Welfare Benefits, Debt, Immigration,
Health, Housing & personal issues.
Information & Respite Care for the Elderly, Disabled & their carers.
Day Care Services for Frail Elderly and Disabled.
Summer play-scheme for children aged 6 to 15.
Summer youth activities.

The Bangladeshi community in Leicester is one of the poorest with individuals experiencing discrimination and social isolation. The lack of English Language skills makes it difficult for them to access the system and support services. BYCS is often their only point of contact for advice and support which is provided free of cost.

During the financial year 2003-2004, about 25,000 users (defined as using the facility one time) benefited from various activities of BYCS. During this period we have recruited 194 learners under Continuous Personal Development Programme. In total the learners achieved 241 externally accredited certificates.

ICT Learning Centre and local community access point

Opened On 21^st February 2002,
Supported by the Department for Education & Skills & the New Opportunities Fund.
SRB supported the regeneration of derelict roof space where the facility is located.

CONTINUOUS PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

PROGRAMME (CPDP)

In 2002 BYCS set up the CPDP programme to focus on the Learning needs of individuals from the ages of 16 upwards. The aim is to offer Training/ Education and Lifelong Learning, with support and counselling, to enable an individual get the skills necessary for life today. The Community Fund and European Social Fund are supporting this development. ESF support ceased in June 2004.

Over a period of 3 years this project recruited 578 learners – These learners achieved 525 externally accredited certificates and 115 non-acredited certificates.

Access Learning is funded through Leicestershire Learning and Skills Council European Social Fund Objective 3 Co-financed Projects for a period of two years (January 2004- December 2005).

Overcoming Barriers has been developed within the context of the ESF Objective 3 Action Plan for the East Midlands.. The project aims to develop an improved understanding of the barriers and constraints faced by minority ethnic women in terms of their ability to access learning programmes and to improve their position within the labour market. It is a two-stage project with a research component which seeks to assess the relative position of ethnic minority women as a means of identifying barriers and constraints faced when seeking career enhancement and progression followed by the delivery of learning modules designed to address some of the issues identified by the study.

Underachievement amongst black and minority ethnic young people is one of the challenges facing the communities in Leicester.

Funding from NRF allowed setting up of the BME Complementary Education Network of 4 organisations – African Caribbean Citizens Forum (ACCF), Bangladesh Youth and Cultural Shomiti (BYCS), Muslim Khatri Association (MKA) and Pakistan Youth and Community Association (PYCA) .

The network offers out of school hours support to children from the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, African Caribbean and other communities in community settings to improve their achievement levels.

Qualified staff provides structured learning opportunities, one to one support, mentoring and peer led interventions to pupils at Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 in English, Maths and Science. All are offered access to ICT facilities and 3 students who retook GCSE Math examination improved their grades from D to C.

80% of these will not have achieved a Level 2 qualification; 20% will have achieved Level 2 or above.

It is anticipated that the overwhelming majority (98%) of clients will be from black or ethnic minority communities. .

NEW MAJOR PROJECT DEVELOPMENT: BANGLADESHI ACTION RESOURCE CENTRE (BARC)
Present development programmes at BYCS are not possible to be undertaken under the present building restrictions occurring at the premises in Biddulph St. Overcrowding and space conflicts restrict the community capacity development presently available and the confines do not allow for the development of new services to meet community demand.

The principal aim of the Bangladeshi Action Resource Centre (BARC) is to develop a sustainable action resource centre for the Bangladeshi community in Leicester supporting personal development and combating social and economic exclusion of those most in need. The centre will build capacity within one of Leicester’s and the region’s most disadvantaged communities and will also improve access for those mostly but not exclusively in the Bangladeshi community to new technologies and training infrastructure.

The LERP is supporting the development of ICT and related crèche facilities only. LSC & NRF partly contributed to match funding for the project.

The project will offer a mix of formal and informal learning designed to address key outcomes within the Children’s Fund prospectus. Within group settings working with a total of 50 young people over two years, we shall offer the following range of development opportunities:

1) Saturday and Sunday workshops (10am-12 noon) to improve language acquisition skills (English and Bengali).

3) The establishment of a community newsletter managed and produced by young people reflecting on issues and activities relevant to the Bangladeshi community. The newsletter will enable young people to address issues which they identify to be of concern (e.g. parental involvement in learning; anti-bullying and discrimination; substance abuse and related issues; highlighting under-achievement in schools and promoting positive messages about learning to young Bangladeshi children; showcasing positive examples of learning and success within the community).

4) Establishment and implementation of road safety training courses for young people in order to ensure that beneficiaries have knowledge about safe routes and road traffic issues.

BUILDING BLOCKS,
The aim of Building Blocks is to provide a community based learning and development programme for young people aged 16-18 years who lack the appropriate skills to enter mainstream provision. It will offer basic and key skills qualifications, including basic ICT skills, provide vocational advice and guidance and offer work tasters with SMEs. The project will especially seek to recruit young people from the BME communities. Project objectives are to: ensure that disadvantaged young people have the requisite skills to enable them to enter mainstream provision, especially E2E; re-enthuse young people through learning, especially those who have been educational under-achievers; provide accredited qualifications; offer work tasters as the basis for further progression within the labour market.

· to encourage members of the local community to actively consider participation in first rung learning opportunities and to promote the benefits of lifelong learning generally;

· to provide a wide range of accredited and non-accredited learning and training opportunities enabling beneficiaries to improve their ability and confidence to learn and to acquire key and other skills;

· to support beneficiaries towards further opportunities, including learning, training and employment.

This is also an ESF/LSC Cofinanced project

For further information, please contact:
Dr Shofiqul Islam Chowdhury
Programme Development Manager
Tel: 0116 275 5855, Mobile: 07850 278 422
Fax: 0116 275 5844, Voice-mail: 0116 275 5822
e-mail: learn4life@bycs.org.uk