Mosaic joined our Patron, HRH The Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace at the launch of the high-profile new initiative on 21st November to encourage young people to do more work in the community, in a bid to tackle gang violence. The campaign is called Step Up 2 Serve. Mosaic Board Member Uzair Bawany attended the event, alongside all three main party leaders. As part of the campaign, Uzair announced Mosaic’s pledge to create a new youth panel, deliver a new mentoring module on the benefits of volunteering and to recruit even more student mentors.

The Prince was joined at the launch by Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and opposition leader Ed Miliband, plus 50 young people, to start a pledge campaign called #iwill.

The Prince has been inspired to act and launch his new campaign by meeting the parents of children who have been violently killed. Writing in the Mail on Sunday on 17th November, The Prince commented that street murders were the “extreme result of too many young people no longer guided through a rite of passage”. The prince added that at present, fewer than three in 10 young people volunteered regularly – the campaign proposes that this should rise to half of all those aged between 10 and 20 by 2020 to fulfil the Prince’s vision of people from all walks of life, ‘stepping up’

All of the participating organisations involved in the campaign are making a public pledge. Mosaic will step up and help all young people to have every opportunity to serve others by:

• Establishing a new youth panel to inform our mentor programmes by June 2014
• Developing a new module in our secondary school mentoring programme on the benefits of and options for volunteering to be rolled out in academic year 2014/15
• Developing a specific mentor recruitment campaign aimed at higher education students to be rolled out in academic year 2014/15.

Mosaic’s National Director, Jonathan Freeman commented on the initiative: “We are delighted to be a part of this campaign; Mosaic has pledged its support via our existing mentor programmes and we will add a new stream specifically recruiting mentors for higher education students.”

Find out more about our mentoring programmes