Berkshire Youth Trust was formed to provide an infrastructure that supports the development of youth initiatives offered by Berkshire Youth, a charitable organisation which has delivered high quality, efficient youth support services in Berkshire for over 75 years – helping young people make successful transitions to adulthood.

The problems affecting young people today are a regular feature of news headlines. Knife crime, drug abuse, lack of access to quality education and skills development. Across all of this hangs the spectre of mental health concerns, complicating an already difficult landscape for millions of Britain’s young people. In this respect, sadly, Berkshire is no different. This is where our work began.

We have created Berkshire Youth Trust to raise the funding and provide the wide necessary professional skills to implement Berkshire Youth’s Inspired Facilities strategy to provide three specially refurbished buildings in:

1. Newbury
2. Reading/Wokingham
3. Slough

They will all be specifically created and designed for us to provide the safe and caring environment required by so many vulnerable local youngsters.

The first of these projects is Newbury’s recently acquired Waterside building. A complete refurbishment of the Waterside Centre will create a state-of-the-art youth services facility. This £1.5m project will become a 24/7 hub of youth support services for the foreseeable future. Some funds have already been raised and we seek a further £280K to ensure the project is completed. We then move forward to our second project.