“Early Christmas Present as youth charity receives National Award”
Photo: The Door team receiving their award at their annual celebration and awards night
The Door, a leading youth charity in the Stroud district in Gloucestershire, has been awarded the coveted National Youth Agency Quality Mark at the Advanced level.
The Door has been supporting young people and their families for over 30 years, empowering individuals and bringing hope into their lives by unlocking their potential and opening up opportunities so that their past does not define their future.
The National Youth Agency (NYA) believes in the power of youthwork to enhance young people’s lives and prepare them for their future by helping to identify their strengths, and to use those to learn, grow and become active members of their communities.
The NYA Quality Mark, which will be held by the Door for three years, recognises high quality youthwork through benchmarked standards and indicators based on the National Occupational Standards. It allows organisations to demonstrate how they achieve high standards assessed against each indicator and gives them an opportunity to be externally validated for excellent services.
The Door’s work includes youth clubs across the District in Stroud, Stonehouse, Cam, Dursley, Fairford and Avening as well as work in local secondary schools.
The Door also provides mentoring for young people, parents and families which it believes helps build resilience, vital to mental well-being. It even has an online ‘Resilience Gym’ anyone can use. It played a major part in mentoring as part of the Gloucestershire Mentoring Programme, offering young ‘at risk’ females the chance to form a long-lasting relationship with a trained volunteer mentor.
To receive this accolade The Door’s youthwork team completed a year long audit of their working practises, compiled a report and spent two days hosting a member of the NYA team in sessions, meetings and out and about in the community.
Laura Keegan, Quality Practice Manager at NYA, said: “The Door believes in investing in its people and that shows massively on the ground and sets them apart from other organisations. One of the things they do amazingly well is look after their staff. They often recruit unqualified people and invest in their skills development.
“They’re also very well organised and I particularly like their robust reporting systems – they take an evidence-based approach from their own experience.
“The standard of their reporting was another strong point with lots of great stories about how their work has benefited young people.”
Victoria Robson, Chief Executive of The Door, said: “We are absolutely delighted and proud to have been awarded the NYA Quality Mark. It is the result of a lot of hard work by all the team at The Door to demonstrate our commitment to young people and our determination to help them have a future determined by their potential, not their past.”
For more information about the NYA Quality Mark, visit: https://www.nya.org.uk/quality/quality-mark/