Get Involved

When considering a fundraising challenge to support our work with young people, we can help promote your activity through our social channels. See our fundraising page for some examples of what previous volunteers have done to raise funds.

Once you have decided on what you want to do for your fundraising challenge, we’ll also set up an appeal page on our LocalGiving page and promote what you’re doing on our social media platforms. All funds/resources raised will go directly towards our work to empower young people to realise their professional ambitions.

Making a donation

We will provide you with our details on a branded letterhead for you to use for a transfer if you want to make a one-off financial donation. You can also use our LocalGiving page to make a one-off donation or even set up an ongoing monthly donation to help our work supporting young people. Either way, if you choose to make a donation towards our work to support young people, your designated Babbasa contact will guide you through the process.

Directly supporting young people – Hub Days, mentoring and/or supporting a learning experience

Many EOAs are particularly interested in getting involved with our frontline work with young people and communities. This includes mentoring, speaking, outreach volunteering, employability workshop facilitation/assistance, enterprise experience lead etc. We also welcome any ideas you may have on meaningful activities for young people.

Since our work is driven by the needs of the young people we support, we cannot always guarantee that there would be an opportunity to engage with them within your availability schedules, however, we actively work to ensure that you have the chance to engage in an experience over the course of the year.

Depending on the engagement opportunity, we will provide you with additional guidance and support before you start delivery. You will also have a designated point of contact for the engagement activity who will be offering periodic check-ins.

Introducing supporters to Babbasa

You can introduce your friends, family, associates and colleagues to become Equal Opportunity Ambassadors. Please send them the EOA information pack or get them to contact urfan.ali@byep.org.uk. In addition, you can introduce your employer to become a potential Corporate Partner with us. For further information about how we can work with employers to benefit young people and minority communities and support employer’s diversity, CSR and inclusion objectives, please contact urfan.ali@byep.org.uk

Referring Young People in Need

If you know of any young person(s) from an underrepresented community looking for support to either explore their ambitions, build their confidence or pursue a career, please do not hesitate to put them in touch. Our Outreach Team would love to hear from you. Please make the referral using this form. If would like to speak to someone about an enquiry, please contact urfan.ali@byep.org.uk

Offer pro bono consultancy/advice, equipment or venue space.

As a growing social enterprise we experience the same challenges as any other business. Oftentimes we need expert support and advice in different areas of the business, eg HR, Law, Finance, Digital, Marketing. If you are a professional with expertise in an area that you think could support us, do let us know.
We also run many workshops and events and often need suitable venue space to accommodate small to large groups of people, or even to conduct a 1-2-1, so if you have access to suitable venue space, please let us know. Sometimes we need access to kit, eg film and podcasting recording facilities to help with our Babbasa TV channel, or a tradesperson to rectify a problem we may have in our hub!

Once you’ve filled in your Expression of Interest form, you’ll be:

1. Sent a follow-up email to attend our next induction (currently these are all held virtually and run approximately every 2 months), where you can hear more about Babbasa, the role, live engagement opportunities and ask any questions about your preferred challenges. After which, we’ll ask you to complete our Agreement Form.
2. Included in our EOA Network Group (Slack), which we will use to highlight forthcoming opportunities (typically the needs-based ones like mentoring and delivering a learning opportunity), challenges, events and activities that you can engage with or share with your networks.
3. Invited to our bi-annual flagship events. The first event (mid year) – organised in conjunction with our Trailblazers, as part of our Babbasa Anniversary Celebrations (Summer Party). The second event (end of year) – organised in conjunction with the Babbasa Team as an Annual Stakeholder Gathering & Fundraising Event to hear about our impact for the year.
4. Encouraged to connect with us online (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Youtube), so we can interact with you on a regular basis and for you to share what we are doing with your networks.
5. Added to our email subscription, so you can find out how our campaigns are progressing internally, and how your work is contributing to our success on a bi-monthly basis.

You get to choose the three challenges of your choice, to be completed over the course of a 12 month period. At Babbasa, we will aim to work with you and ensure that you get the support needed to complete the challenges of your choice. However we cannot always guarantee that you will get to engage with your preferred challenge within a timeframe/schedule that might be suitable for you. We have provided the information below to help guide your expectations:

Donations, referrals, and fundraising – These are primarily done in your own time, and require relatively minimal support from Babbasa so can be set up within a couple of weeks after completing your post-induction Agreement Form.

Pro bono consultancy/advice, venue space, equipment – this will vary depending on our current needs, however, if you spot an opportunity to provide support, do let us know.

Working directly with young people – For activities that require active staff involvement and young people, such as workshops and mentoring, services are provided on a needs-first basis.
This means that we prioritise workshops and mentoring matches that are of immediate need for the young people that we are supporting first and foremost. To be more specific:

1. Employability Workshops – we usually run this on a fortnightly basis. Occasionally we will also run a bespoke workshop in line with the skills and experience that you can offer, but this will be at Babbasa’s discretion and based on the current needs of the young people we are working with. Involvement in workshops will typically include supporting young people to develop their soft skills, CVs, cover letters, applications (education or job), interview prep or enterprise skill/knowledge share.
2. Mentoring – we have two types of mentoring experiences i) the semi-structured 3-6 month scheme run on a bi-annual basis ii) ad-hoc/one-off mentoring support needs that come up on a regular basis as a requirement from young people that we are working with. In practice, we keep both interested EOAs and young people on our mentoring list. However, matching is done based on interests, aspirations and commonality. Hence the speed of finding a suitable young person or vice versa will vary depending on the industry and some of the aforementioned characteristics, and in some cases a suitable match may not be found in your 12-month challenge period.

Mentoring and delivering a learning experience are the only two challenges that you may not be able to engage with straight away. We however keep you on our contact list for when the opportunity arises over the course of the year.

You will also be added to our EOA Slack channel, where you will regularly receive information about live opportunities to support young people and any other relevant events and activities. You could also be invited to attend one of our employability workshops, where appropriate, to observe, support and get a feel for the questions that young people typically ask.

As soon as you’ve had your induction, completed your Agreement as an EOA, and we have carried out any necessary DBS checks (if mentoring is one of your challenges), you are welcome to start on your challenges and your designated point of contact will be there to support you.

In terms of checking in, it is very much a two-way process and is designed to get a feel for how you are managing during your time as an EOA, and if there’s anything else you need from us, and also what could be improved. We’re strong believers in continuously iterating and refining the way we work. We do, however, keep in touch throughout the process. See the answer to ‘How will you stay in touch?’

The extent of your commitment will vary a lot depending on the challenges that you take up. However, we estimate that you could be committing anywhere between 1 to 5 hours per month over the 12 months you spend as an EOA depending on what challenges you are undertaking.