Government to match donations to youth charity

Donations to Christian youth charity Street Space are set to be matched by the government.

Up to £2,500 given through LocalGiving.com during the first week of March will be matched pound for pound. Donations can also be gift-aided, meaning the organisation will receive £110 for every £50 given by a taxpayer.

Street Space has helped reduce anti-social behaviour by running detached youth work services across the country.

Street Space began in 2007 when the charity was piloted in Chard, Devon and Birmingham. After three succesful years, it was launched nationally in 2010.

Founder of the Frontier Youth Project organisation, Richard Passmore said Street Space is about "good professional Christian youthwork and good missional engagement with young people". He believes the charity's work is at the "cutting edge" of the Emerging church in the UK.

The author of Meet Them Where They're At said: "We work with young people on the edge who would never normally come near church. We have an 'outside-out' approach to mission. We go out with young people in the community, engage them on their terms on the streets and seek to grow church in their context rather than expecting them to come into church."

"We're growing a new project every three weeks and are now meeting 5000 people a month on the streets...We've got different expressions of church in the network from Curry Church to stuff in Scotland around Pot Noodles."

As well as working in the UK, the charity is taking six young people to Romania later this year. The team will partner with a local charity in helping to build a Pharmacy.

"A lot of the young people we work with want to get apprentiships and work in the building trade but unless they have family contacts they struggle to get a place so this will really boost their CV as well as being a great experience overall."

The charity is partnered with Church Missionary Society and is keen to support local church projects.

"If there's any projects out there that want to do something on the estate down the road or reach out to people in the town centre, get in touch!"