About Us

Fitzrovia Youth in Action (FYA) is a community based youth action project that uses youth work, sports, and media to engage young people and support them in developing projects which benefit the community and improve relationships between people from different ethnic and age groups.

 

Set up in 1997, our motto is ‘young people creating a better community’. Young people experience many of the same problems that other residents face and are even more vulnerable to some of them.  Through our work, we hope to demonstrate the positive impact their involvement can have, both for the community as well as for the young people themselves.

 

Young people can be a valuable resource for their ideas and ability to influence their peers in activities, which benefit the community.   We strongly believe that young people should be able to play a role in shaping their community.  Instead of seeing young people as 'outsiders' causing problems for the rest of the community, we want to show how they should be seen as active partners.  Young people are rarely given the opportunity to participate as active citizens and their ideas or opinions are not often sought.

 

Our work combines the need for young people to have fun while involving them in community projects; builds a local leadership of young people; shows young people in a positive light and brings them together with older residents; and provides a link between young people and policy-makers and service deliverers.

 

Our work began (see How we Started) with improving social relations around the Warren football pitch in Fitzrovia (Fitzrovia is the name of the central London district around BT Tower).   This work continues through our football programme and we organise a range of local projects aimed at improving relationships between young people and other residents.  Since we were established, we have witnessed the many benefits that self directed community action can have for the young people concerned and for the wider community.

 

Much of our work nowadays is focussed on promoting youth participation throughout the London Borough of Camden.  We operate peer education programmes (drugs and sexual health), youth media projects (‘OnRoad’ youth magazine and video production), youth representation projects (we co-ordinate 5 area youth forums in Camden) and peer-led work aimed at addressing territorial conflict through sport (Camden Unity Cup).  Please follow the links on the left for further details about our projects.

 

Most of our youth participation programmes are operated in partnership with a wide range of community organisations and statutory agencies.