The Foundation
The Sojourner Foundation (TSF), a youth initiative, was registered in 2003 as a charity to become a catalyst for community cohesion. With the vision of helping communities to lead and transform their developments needs into sustainable empowerment actions, the mission of TSF is to work primarily with youth, at-risk youth and women – to give persons the opportunity to be responsible for the upliftment and upkeep of their community, as a community. Under our mandate, we also build strategic partnerships and offer opportunities for empowerment through various projects and programmes created for young men and women.
Refocusing Our Vision / Partnerships
Although these activities and events did a good job of bringing sections of the community together, we recognised that there was a greater need to address core issues such as unemployment, youth deviance, poverty and crime. As a result, the Foundation repositioned itself to focus on community development and social enterprise and to develop more long-term sustainable projects/programmes that could have a greater impact on these core issues. To strive to create sustainable livelihoods and provide greater opportunities and empowerment actions became our priority for at risk urban young men and women across our communities. To bring these dreams to a reality, we have partnered with several entities in the NGO, private and government sectors for funding, technical and other support areas. Some of these partners include UNDP Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP), Maria Holder Memorial Trust, Sagicor Life Inc, Change Institute International, Women and Development Unit (UWI Open Campus), Barbados Youth Advance Programme, Brewsters Trust, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Sports, Youth and Culture.