Chair & Chief Executive’s message Welcome to our latest Annual Report for 2019, another year of important achievements and also challenges affecting EYST, our clients and the wider BAME sector in Wales. During 2019 we continued to consolidate our presence in locations across Wales. We established the new Cultures Youth Club in Wrexham, developed new projects in Cardiff and Newport, and continued to develop our work in Swansea. One new area of work was our partnership working with Citizens Advice Cymru to deliver the EU Citizens Rights Programme, supporting EU Migrants to register for the EU Settlement Scheme, as we prepare to leave the European Union. We also continued to support refugee families resettled in Swansea, Carmarthenshire and Powys through the Global Resettlement Scheme. 2019 saw us support record numbers of clients – 4693 individuals across our service areas, supported by 123 volunteers and a staff team of 40. We also hosted a growing number of 4-month work placements, providing a springboard to success for 19 individual BAME young people. During 2019, we were honoured to host a number of important conferences including the United We Stand conference, in partnership with Race Alliance Wales, which took place in the wake of the horrific
terrorist attacks in New Zealand, and the End of Project Conference for our Resilience Project which supported 825 young people in its final year. Another important achievement was delivering two successful rounds of the All Wales BAME Engagement Programme’s Public Life Mentoring Project, with almost 50 Mentees and Mentors having gone through the programme to date, with some notable success stories.
Although this report reflects the work during 2019, this welcome note is written during a time of a global pandemic with all the challenges that entails. Equally seismic has been the development of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in America. Our work now looks set to become even more important than ever as Wales and the world takes stock of the impact of these two events.
As always, we are hugely grateful to our hardworking staff team, volunteers and board for all their efforts and sacrifices in making our vision of a Wales where everyone is welcomed, valued and can contribute, a reality.
Solidarity, health and peace to you all. Rocio Cifuentes Chief Executive Dr. Shehla Khan Chairperson
EYST.ORG.UK 55 EYST.ORG.UK
