Article appeared in The Philip Lawrence Awards Magazine 2006

Ashuk Ahmed reports on the exciting developments from Mitalee Summer School Project.

From awareness building, fundraising successes to international film production, it has been an exciting and progressive time since the Luton based project was awarded its Philip Lawrence Award in 2005.

"Working at the Mitalee Summer School as a volunteer really made me think about my career direction. I loved the work so much, I’ve just started a BA in Childhood and Adolescence. It was a really good experience receiving the Philip Lawrence Award - it was good meeting all the different groups and cultures that they represented."

Seema, 18, Mitalee Summer School: “Winning the award last year has helped us immensely in delivering the summer school project. This summer we had 32 young volunteers – that’s more than double last year’s 15. And this year, instead of us trying to find and recruit volunteers, because of the raised profile of the project, they came to us. It was a huge success. There were 320 young people registered this year, and every day we ran a wide range of activities for 140 people: everything from arts and crafts, drama and DJ workshops, to issues-based activities around subjects such as anti-bullying and drugs. We were successful in raising £23,000 for the project and were able to offer all the young volunteers accredited training in first aid, child protection, basic food and hygiene, and a residential course. The summer school was much better and more professionally delivered because of all the training the volunteers had. And this is down to us winning the Philip Lawrence Award.”

Beyond the summer school
Outside the summer school, we’ve really developed too. Because of its success, we decided to deliver some evening youth clubs. We work in partnership with two schools, a junior school and a high school, and hold sports-based activities and a general youth drop-in session. One of the volunteers involved with the Philip Lawrence Award now gets paid for 9 hours a week to work with young women. The award really boosted her confidence, she’s much more dedicated as a volunteer and contributes so much. Other girls see her as a role model, they see what she’s achieved and want to do the same. We’ve got three more projects in the pipeline too – all led by young people. We received heritage funding to run a research project looking at the contribution and struggle of the first generation of Bangladeshi people. Some of the Mitalee Summer School volunteers will be leading on the project.

Diversity on the air waves
We’ve also been awarded a five-year full-time community radio licence by Ofcom. The radio station will be called Diverse FM (DFM) and we hope to start broadcasting from April 2007. We will be broadcasting programmes in all different community languages to reflect the diversity of Luton. We’ll be training all the young volunteers that want to take part. The equipment has all been donated to us but we’ll need to pay for studio rent, so we’re applying for government funding at the moment.

Film production boom
Another funding success has been that we raised £72,000 to produce two films. This was beyond our wildest dreams – the most we’d ever raised before winning the Philip Lawrence Award was £5,000. The first film was about drugs and developed from a drama workshop run as part of the summer school. It was called The Cage and it was so successful that it was broadcast six times a week on Channel S, an Asian television channel. We had a professional team helping us make the film, but the young people wrote the script and played roles in the film, others shadowed the sound or camera technicians.

The other film which is 95 per cent complete is one about forced marriage. In April, we took 20 people to Bangladesh on a youth exchange programme. They worked with young people living in Bangladesh on a subject they chose themselves – forced marriage. With the help of a Bangladeshi production house we made an hour and a half film, and because we had the support of the British High Commission out there, the Home Office Forced Marriage Unit in this country have asked to see a copy. We want to distribute it free to schools, colleges, community centres, and other relevant organisations. For this project, the young people did 70 per cent of the fundraising themselves.

We’re also working on a film that we started a couple of years ago with local high schools on the dangers of carrying a knife. We wanted to raise awareness of knife and gang-related violence. This one involves 15–17 year olds from different ethnic backgrounds so we don’t stereotype or categorise people. None of this would have been possible without winning the Philip Lawrence Award and the increased profile and publicity it’s given us.