Harehills charity Learning Partnerships is helping the disadvantaged to overcome barriers.

Learning Partnerships works in some of the most deprived areas of Leeds. It aims to empower people through a raft of courses and to help them overcome barriers.

Its work varies from teaching English to foreign nationals, running a mentoring scheme encouraging children to read, to helping people manage money and giving them job-hunting skills.

Cath O’Grady, senior executive at Learning Partnerships, said: “Originally Learning Partnerships was set up 28-years-ago as an educational charity to work with local schools because we are in a very different area of Leeds. It was to support the children and one of the first things we did was to provide computers to one of the local schools.

“But we have now morphed into doing at a lot of work with parents. What we do now is more about employability. Apart from two programmes, ‘Let’s Read’ and ‘2 Way Street’ which work with children, the rest of our work is either with parents or with unemployed people from the local area. We try to and get them into a better place either engaged in education, training or into employment.”

The charity works in diverse areas so popular programmes include ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages. Its adult learning programme works with around 1,000 people a year and half of them do ESOL.

One of Learning Partnerships’ long-running schemes is ‘Let’s Read’. The scheme, which helps improve literacy levels, sees volunteers go into 14 primary schools across Leeds.

The initiative is overseen by programme manager Gail Clark, who has been working on literacy schemes for Learning Partnerships for nearly 22 years.

Gail said: “It involves recruiting and training volunteers from local companies and communities to go into inner city schools in deprived areas of Leeds to help the children with their reading.”

She said some of the children they worked with had dysfunctional home lives and didn’t get support outside of school. And for many, English is their second language.

But through Let’s Read they get paired with a mentor who gives them one-to-one help with literacy skills.

Another key scheme which has been really successful is ‘NHS Into Work’. The joint programme between the charity, Leeds City Council and the NHS, is directed at priority areas like the Cliftons and Nowells area - which are among the one percent most deprived communities in the country - and Lincoln Green which faces similar problems.

The scheme, now on its third edition, aims to help unemployed people or those in low skilled jobs into entry level jobs within the health service. The employment initiative’s last two programmes netted 37 jobs or job offers out of 50 people.

Learning Partnerships, which is just two years shy of its 30th anniversary, is planning to carry on its sterling community work long into the future. Senior executive Cath O’Grady said: “We want to continue supporting people to make sure we can make that difference and make the area a better place. It’s about continuing the provision, trying to educate and help as many people as we can in the best way possible.”

For more information about the ‘Let’s Read’ programme email [email protected].

FACT FILE:

Learning Partnerships is based in the Burton Building in Harehills.

The charity has 28 years of experience of working in the inner-city to provide opportunities and support for children, young people and adults to access education, employment, training and volunteering.

One of its flagship programmes for children is 2 Way Street, which aims to raise awareness of the environment and to reduce waste locally.

The scheme in East Leeds, which is led by Susan Docherty, strives to achieve this by a variety of means, including gardening clubs and by having green teams in schools to cut waste in the classroom.

Lisa Hibbert, partnerships manager at the charity, said: “A lot of Susan’s work is focussed on wellbeing, so she is going to be doing new community garden sessions in April in the Nowell Mount and Osmondthorpe areas. People can get involved in planting and harvesting their own produce.

“On 2 Way Street, Susan is going to be continuing with gardening in schools, highlighting the importance of children learning where their food comes from and the other advantages of being around nature and green spaces.”

For details of the many other projects the charity runs, checkout Learning Partnerships’ Facebook page.

You can also follow Learning Partnerships on Twitter via @LP_Leeds. It is also on Instagram under learningpartnershipsleeds.