About us
“Young Roots is the place to make you the person who can change the world for the better. It's for me a second family.” - young refugee we work with
Our Vision
A compassionate and welcoming society for young people seeking safety in the UK.
Our Mission
To work alongside young people seeking safety in the UK, building trusted relationships, providing practical and emotional support and promoting young people’s rights and power.
Our Values
Our values are at the heart of everything we do. These are:
Integrity – we act courageously and independently in the best interests of young people, as determined by them, and are transparent and accountable for our actions.
Openness – we are adaptable and open to change. We are curious, reflect on our impact, and are keen to learn how to do things better.
Kindness & compassion – we prioritise kindness and compassion, to build supportive relationships and promote wellbeing. We focus on supporting the wellbeing of our staff and volunteers.
Inclusivity – we believe we have an important role to play in addressing societal inequities. We value the benefits of diversity and we strive to be inclusive. This affects all aspects of our work, including our work with young people, our team and our wider strategy.
Empowerment – we believe in the unique strengths of each member of staff and each individual young person. We trust our team to act autonomously and transfer power to young people to build their autonomy, independence and agency.
Young Roots’ history
Young Roots is proud of our history, and our values and ethos have developed from the early work of our founders.
2004 - Our start
Young Roots was founded in 2004 as Refugee Youth Project by Roz Evans, Rachel Yarrow and Kathy Brook. They established the charity with the aim of supporting refugee children and other young refugees in the UK and internationally. They had worked on an education project the Al Bass refugee camp in Lebanon and returned to the UK determined to raise money to continue the work they had started.
From this seed the Refugee Youth Project was established, and sure enough, they achieved their ambition and returned to Lebanon the following summer to run the project. From the beginning, the charity was focused on understanding from young people themselves the interventions that were most useful and needed. These principles of youth participation, research-based action and ensuring a human rights based approach have guided the charity throughout its history.
We became a UK registered charity in January 2011, and after a consultation with young people changed our name to Young Roots in September 2014. Over time our work developed, and new projects took place.
Together with our trusted partners in Lebanon, The Sour Community Disability Project (SCDP), we delivered high quality educational and social activities to 90-100 young people each year, with clear positive impacts on their development and wellbeing. In 2023, following an external review of the Lebanon project as part of our ongoing focus on strengthening our governance, trustees at Young Roots took the difficult decision to end our funding of the project. We are proud of and grateful for the eleven years of partnership between Young Roots and SCDP.
2006 - London
Young Roots first started working in Barnet, London in 2006 responding to the needs of Whitefield School where there were a high proportion of young refugees. In 2012, we were one of the first organisations to recognise the needs of young refugees in Croydon. We conducted a needs assessment and then successfully applied fpr our first Big Lottery grant and began our Bridging London Project in March 2013. This project provided youth activities and supported refugee, asylum seeking and migrant young people aged 11-21 years in the London boroughs of Barnet, Brent and Croydon. In 2016, with a second grant from the Big Lottery, we established our flagship Casework Service to work one-to-one with young refugees and asylum seekers. Thanks to support from Children in Need, Lloyds Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation, we were able to deepen our presence in Croydon and Brent, and appoint our first Director.
Roz Evans remained a much valued Senior Caseworker until 2021, and is still involved with the charity today.
2007 - Nepal
In 2007-8 we began a project in Nepal with young person-led research focused on Bhutanese refugees who had arrived in Nepal in the early 1990s fleeing political conflict following the Bhutanese government’s ‘one nation, one people’ policy. This research found that some children in the camps, such as those without parents, or with parents who are elderly, disabled or ill, experienced difficulties receiving adequate support and finding time to focus on studies. A large resettlement programme began in 2008, through which thousands have found new homes in the USA, Canada, Australia and other countries (including a small number the UK). However, for the remaining refugees, the situation became increasingly difficult with fewer social support networks in place and diminished capacity to provide camp services.
Between 2012 - 2019, we have provided funding for our delivery partners to provide training and activities to Nepali and refugee children to improve relations and to create opportunities for them to advocate for their rights within their local communities.
2011 - Manchester
Following on from our project supporting refugee children in Nepal, in 2011 we facilitated a participatory filmmaking project with a group of young Bhutanese refugees who had recently been resettled to Greater Manchester.
2012 - Egypt
In 2012, we worked in partnership with a grassroots organisation called Children’s Cooperative to facilitate a young person-led research project. This explored refugee and Egyptian children’s experiences of education in Cairo.
