STEAM Mentoring Request for Proposals

Proposals must be informed by local knowledge, need and demand, and shaped by those closest to your communities who have experience of previous delivery. We want to fund projects that will deliver to young people aged 10 to 24 who are facing the biggest challenges, who are furthest away from opportunity and who are under-represented in the STEAM sector (such as girls and Black young people).

An illustrative list of the needs and characteristics of the groups of children and young people that we want to help can be found below. This list is not prescriptive (or exhaustive) and we want to hear evidence of local need through your application, together with information on how you are helping young people with those needs. Many young people will also be experiencing multiple disadvantages.

Children and young people:

• with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
• who are excluded, or are at risk of exclusion, from school or college
• who are at risk of becoming involved in violence
• who are associated with gangs or impacted by exploitation
• who are not in employment, education or training (NEET)
• who are experiencing or have been impacted by domestic violence and abuse
• who are young refugees and asylum-seekers
• who are from low-income families/living in poverty
• who have a social worker (Children Looked After, with a Child Protection Plan, Children in Need and Care Leavers)

Projects can be delivered in one neighbourhood, a borough, or across several London boroughs. You will need to demonstrate how you are linking to existing work in the location that you are proposing to deliver from, for example details of how you will link with boroughs’ employability or regeneration strategies and how you will work with other local agencies.

We want to fund a balanced programme that supports young Londoners who are most in need across the city. We will be looking to fund projects:

• who have specialisms in supporting young people of different ages with different needs and characteristics
• who have specialisms in working with mentors from employers of different sizes and from different parts of the STEAM sector
• who, as well as delivering good mentoring, have the capacity to work with STEAM employers to help them introduce or expand their mentoring offer. Organisations need to be outward facing and ready to contribute and to be part of a movement for change
• who are located in different parts of the capital

We recognise that many organisations will be supporting young people with multiple needs and delivering mentoring in many different ways. You’ll need to explain in your application how you have worked with employers who provide volunteer mentors and the wrap-around support you will provide to both the mentee and mentor.

We are also particularly interested in funding organisations that are led by the communities that they represent and that the communities that projects are aimed at are actively involved in the design, delivery and evaluation of the projects. In your application please explain how you have involved the young people your mentoring is targeted at, and the organisations you propose to support in the design, delivery and evaluation of your project.

We are broadly basing our definition of ‘mentoring’ on that used by Nesta: “Drawing on existing definitions, we see youth mentoring as trusting, purposeful and ongoing relationships between a younger person or people, and a person they are unrelated to, which involve the exchange of support, advice, encouragement, and skills development”Reference:6. Mentoring is based around personal need and delivered through strong trusted relationships. Mentors can include a wide range of adults and peers who have a trusted relationship with the young person. Mentors are trained and operate in a supported environment where both the young person and the trusted individual both know the expectations and boundaries of the relationship. We recognise that these trusted relationships can be forged in lots of different environments, including those that are less formal, and delivered in different ways.

We want to see proposals that are informed by evidence of what works. This evidence may have come from previous projects that you have run, or from elsewhere.

Applicants must prove how they will involve young people in their design and delivery of their project.

• expand quality STEAM mentoring for young people aged 10 to 24 with the greatest need and who are under-represented in STEAM: grants will fund the expansion of your mentoring and personalised support. You’ll need to give details in your application of the activity that you will deliver, including who you will be supporting through your mentoring, how you will address their needs, the frequency and duration of the mentoring, how you are measuring impact, who the mentors are and your experience of delivery. You should explain how you will engage and inspire young people through STEAM or other activity, how you’ll support young people before matching them to a STEAM mentor, and how you’ll continue to engage and support the young person whilst they are mentored by a STEAM professional.

Through the grant-award process you will need to display how you meet the principles of good mentoring in appendix 1 - for example, how you effectively match mentors to mentees and how you integrate youth voice into your work

Examples of activities that your STEAM mentoring programme could include (but is not restricted to):

• activities to engage young people
• ongoing wraparound and pastoral support
• recruitment and training of volunteer mentors from STEAM employers
• matching of STEAM mentors to the young people that you are supporting
• oversight, coordination and management of the ongoing STEAM mentor and mentee relationship
• STEAM project-based mentoring such as the CREST AwardReference:7 or social action or developing an entrepreneurial product or idea

• support STEAM employers to expand or introduce mentoring programmes, embedding use of the Mentoring Confidence Framework: organisations granted funding will support STEAM employers to introduce and build on their mentoring practice.

Examples of activities to deliver this are (but not restricted to):

• working with the other STEAM mentoring grantees and STEAM employers to share different mentoring models and good practice to give STEAM employees the confidence and knowledge to expand or introduce mentoring
• providing STEAM employers with guidance and training to make it easier for them to support their employees to become mentors – e.g. creating policies allowing for staff volunteer days, establishing staff peer-to-peer networks, enabling work experience opportunities for mentees etc.
• contributing to the co-production and promotion of the confidence framework by sharing your experience of supporting employer mentoring

Confidence Framework coordination

Applicants should note that we will be separately funding an organisation/s to lead development and promotion of the Confidence Framework. You will need to work closely with this organisation/s, with your fellow STEAM mentoring grant-holder and with the organisations delivering NDYP Leaders.

We want to understand the impact of your project on the programme’s aims and objectives. You must show how your project activities will have a positive impact on the young people and organisations these grants aim to support.

Applicants will be asked to identify:

• who are the young people and type of STEAM employers you intend to support?
• what are the needs or issues of the young people and STEAM employers you are aiming to support?
• what activities you will deliver to meet those needs?

By outputs we mean the number of young people and organisations reached or what has been produced through your project activities:

• the number of young people supported by mentoring and/or personalised support (including demographics such as age, ethnicity, gender)
• the number of STEAM mentors taking part in the programme
• the number of STEAM employers that you are reaching
• other outputs specific to your project

By project outcomes, we mean the result, or to what extent the project has led to the desired change. At a programme level we want to achieve the following outcomes:

• improved outcomes for young people benefitting from quality mentoring and personalised support, including increased understanding of STEAM careers and improved transferable skills
• improved quality of mentoring or personalised support provided through long-term employer-based STEAM mentoring
• increased accessibility to mentoring for young Londoners most in need through long-term partnerships between STEAM employers and community mentoring organisations

Applicants will be asked to identify:

• what will change for the young people and employers you are supporting?
• how will you measure that change?

Applicants should give as much information as possible on their project’s outputs and outcomes. The table below suggests a range of outcomes which projects may deliver for young Londoners. Applicants should consider what will change due to their activity and how it can be evidenced in their project’s lifetime.

We will fund:

• operational delivery costs
• core staff and volunteer costs
• monitoring and evaluation costs
• marketing and publicity costs
• associated overhead costs (for example heating, lighting, stationery etc.)
• low value equipment costs (up to £1,000) for audio-visual, sports etc.
• your time and other costs associated with attaining the London Youth Quality Mark

We will not fund:

• capital items
• statutory Physical Education provision (i.e. sport in school time)

We are looking for organisations to run projects that provide disadvantaged young people with quality mentoring and personalised support. To be eligible organisations need to meet the following criteria:

• Your organisation must be legally constituted. If not, you must be part of a Consortium who is a legally constituted organisation or be in a partnership with a Lead Applicant.
• Your organisation must have a bank account, with two separate signatories, (registered in the name of the applicant organisation) into which the grant can be paid.
• The annual grant proposed should not normally constitute more than 50 per cent of your annual turnover. In exceptional circumstances we will consider applications where this does not apply; you must provide details in your application form.
• Your lead applicant must be able to provide audited/examined accounts for at least one year which comply with the relevant regulatory body.
• You must have a proven track record in the work your organisation does.
• You must have expertise and / or experience in delivering the kind of work set out in your proposal.
• You must have all necessary insurances and safeguarding policies in place and be committed to carrying out DBS checks where required.
• You should have or commit to working towards the London Youth Quality Mark Bronze

Grants will be allocated via an open and competitive application process. A Funding Application Form will be completed by all applicants. These will be assessed and shortlisted applicants will be invited to interview. The interview will include a presentation on your proposed project and questions from a young person and officer panel.

The deadline for applications is 5:00pm on Monday 17 January 2022.

You must complete the Funding Application Form including attaching the following supporting documents and email to [email protected]

• copy of your public and employer’s liability insurance
• your Data Protection Policy
• your Safeguarding Policy
• a copy of your organisation’s most recent audited accounts or accounts signed by an independent and qualified accountant

Please note that as part of the assessment process we will be sharing your application with London Councils, Local Authorities, the London Violence Reduction Unit, Voluntary and Community Sector partners, other funders of youth activities and a panel of young people.

If you have any questions around the application process please contact us at [email protected]

Frequently Asked Questions we receive will be added weekly and published with answers on www.london.gov.uk/new-deal-young-people. We will not publish our response to any FAQs that have been submitted after 10 January 2022.

The weighting applied to each assessment area is detailed below:

Each of the above areas will be assessed in accordance with the following criteria:

After proposals have been assessed and scored against the assessment criteria, we will take into consideration the overall spread of proposals to be funded. The factors listed below will also be considered when making final decisions about which suite of projects are awarded funding:

• specific target group demographics
• the type of mentoring and the specialisms of the grant applicant
• scale and level of funding requested
• geographical spread of delivery

We will carry out financial due diligence checks before we offer funding – please see appendix 2 for full details. Successful applicants must provide the required documentation on notification. Please note, local authorities and local authority-maintained schools are exempt from this process.

The grant funding application timetable is detailed below:

Successful applicants must produce an annual delivery plan with key milestones. You must keep the GLA updated with regular progress reports, linked to key milestones and submit quarterly claims to us. You will be required to complete the London Youth Bronze Quality Mark. More information about this can be found at https://londonyouth.org/what-we-do/quality-assurance/

You will also be expected to be available for an inception meeting. You may be asked to contribute to the GLA’s future good practice activity by speaking at events, providing case studies of what has worked well etc.

Delivery organisations must collect standard data on the young people and organisations taking part (including starts, completions and demographic data) and report this on a quarterly basis. This data is in addition to any measures your individual project will have to monitor. This is because we are funding lots of different activities for young people. That means we need to track participation and impact in a standard way across multiple programme streams and projects.

Child protection and safeguarding is of paramount importance. You must send your safeguarding policy and data protection policy with your application. Your safeguarding policy should include how you:

• respond to concerns about a child's wellbeing (including disclosures)
• respond to allegations of abuse made against a child 
• recruit the right people to work and volunteer with children 
• prevent and responding to bullying
• respond to concerns about online abuse
• ensure data, photographs and images of children are taken, stored and shared appropriately; and it should include
• named Safeguarding officer/s

This guidance has been drawn from the NSPCC and is in line with the requirements of the GLA’s Child Policy and Protection Procedures. Once awarded a grant, delivery organisations will be required to report to the GLA if there have been any child safeguarding incidents. If you are a lead partner or consortium we will ask you to provide information on delivery partner safeguarding arrangements and on how your partnership is supporting and monitoring each other’s child protection policies/process.

We are committed to promoting the highest standards of evidence and evaluation. All applicants will be expected to demonstrate how they will evaluate the impact of their project on the anticipated outcomes.

We will also commission an independent provider to evaluate the New Deal for Young People. Successful applicants may be asked to participate in the overall evaluation.

Payment will be based on achievement of key milestones and outputs as set out in the applicant’s grant funding agreement.

An online information session about this opportunity is being held from 1:00pm to 2:30pm on Wednesday 8 December 2021. It will be recorded and shared through the GLA and our partner’s networks.

The following grants are open or will soon open for applications. For information on more City Hall grants see www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/funding-and-innovation