All About Fuse

Fuse offers a safe place for young people with a café area, gig space, annexe and internet café. The internet café is supported by Glasgow Kelvin College. Activities, including formal and informal learning, are offered as supported and developed by young people. Fuse is open six days a week. Afternoon sessions for young people in P5-P7 are offered five days a week for three hours. This includes an hour of formal learning, including homework support. Evening sessions for young people aged 12-18 are offered six days a week, Monday-Saturday, for three hours. In addition, a session is offered during the day for young people aged 16-25 seeking support in further education, training, employability skills, and job seeking.

Fuse is more than providing an alcohol and drug-free venue for local young people to gather. The activities and resources we make available are always evolving to meet the needs and requests of young people. The building of positive relationships between Fuse members and youth workers is pivotal to successfully developing the confidence, social and employability skills of these young people.

The national focus for young people in Scotland is on developing services to enable young people to become confident individuals, successful learners, effective contributors and responsible citizens. These four capacities are fully supported by Fuse’s mission and strategic objectives with our focus on early intervention and underpin our approach to youth work.

As always young people are and must remain at the heart of our organisation and our aim is that over the next three years we will work with young people to plan and evaluate our services.

Our strategic objectives for the three years are:

1. To provide inclusive drop-in services in the East End of Glasgow which respond to young people's needs as they express them
2. To provide opportunities for young people to develop their social, personal and employability skills
3. To be a valued contributor to the East Glasgow Community, working in partnership with other organisations

Through this work, by the end of the plan we aim to reach:

• 100 New Fuse members each year
• 300 members participating in activities each year
• 4000 drop-ins and active members for P5-7 (age10-12) per year
• 4500 drop-ins and active members for 12-18s per year
• 70 participants in job club

And achieve the following outcomes for these young people:

1. Build confidence and social skills, including building relationships
2. Increase awareness of, and involvement in, the community
3. Improve educational opportunities
4. Increase participation in, and achieving, certified learning
5. Improve employability skills
6. Develop work experience
7. Develop ‘job-seeking’ skills to improve access to the job market
8. Improve understanding and knowledge of alcohol, drugs, anti-social behaviour and crime to influence positive life choices
9. Increase the number of young people making positive life choices, encouraging ambition and vision for future possibilities
10. Increase opportunities to develop leadership skills

The period of this operational plan will be a crucial one for the development of Fuse as the vision becomes a sustainable reality. The current economic climate is creates a significant pressure on available resources within the third sector and securing income to continue into 2021 will be a significant challenge.