Year Here - About

YEAR HERE IS A POSTGRADUATE COURSE IN SOCIAL INNOVATION BASED IN LONDON

The course is a platform for entrepreneurial people to build smart solutions to entrenched social problems.

It’s immersive, action-oriented and grounded in the lived experience of Londoners in care homes, hostels and youth services across London.

Our Fellows try their hand at building creative, scalable responses to social problems, supported by industry mentoring and a rigorous social innovation curriculum.

Our Fellows have collectively volunteered over 130,000 hours in frontline services – including homeless shelters, community centres and Pupil Referral Units.

We’ve also launched 50 ventures like Settle, supporting vulnerable young people who are moving into their first home; Chatterbox, a language tuition service staffed by refugees; and Birdsong, a fashion brand selling clothes handcrafted by women’s groups – from elderly knitters to migrant seamstresses – with a ‘no sweatshops, no photoshop’ ethos.

Collectively they have reached over 30,000 beneficiaries, generated more than £8.5m in revenue and received national coverage in The Guardian, Huffington Post, Independent, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Vice and BBC News.

Our alumni have received six Shackleton awards, and six entries on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, an OBE and have won the CSJ’s Social Enterprise of the Year, among many others.

Year Here was launched at Number 10 Downing Street in March 2013 and, since then, has run 16 programmes for 278 people and been named one of Britain’s 50 New Radicals by Nesta and The Observer.

Our Faculty includes social entrepreneurs, policymakers and innovation experts – from Sophie Howarth, co-founder of School Of Life, to multi-award-winning social designer Lauren Currie OBE and the poet Lemn Sissay MBE.

Our Fellows come from all sorts of backgrounds and industries. With an average of 7 years’ career experience, they bring an incredibly diverse set of professional skills and life experiences to the programme. What unites them is their brilliant personal qualities – like resourcefulness, humility and resilience – and their passion for social action.

There are no course fees. Unlike a traditional Master’s degree or postgraduate course, your tuition fee is covered by your placements. Our financial support package includes access to loans, bursaries and TfL discounts, as well as recommendations for flexible paid work and affordable accommodation.

Year Here is a social enterprise, meaning that we exist to bring about positive change in society rather than to maximise shareholder profits.

WHERE WILL THE NEXT GENERATION OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS COME FROM?

This was the question raised by Growing Social Ventures, a report co-written by our founder, Jack Graham.

Since then, leading social innovator Dame Mary Marsh’s review of leadership and skills in the social sector painted a broader picture of widespread skills gaps and a lack of recognition of the role that leadership development has to play.

A talent deficit and a lack of quality professional development opportunities is worrying. Without highly skilled leaders, society will struggle to solve its own problems – from the implications of an ageing population to soaring youth unemployment.

“YEAR HERE PROVIDES AN AMBITIOUS, RIGOROUS AND PRESTIGIOUS ROUTE INTO SOCIAL CHANGE ORGANISATIONS HERE IN THE UK. THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF LEARNING EXPERIENCE THAT SOCIETY NEEDS GRADUATES TO HAVE SO THAT THEY CAN BUILD SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE CAREERS.”

Dame Mary Marsh, Founding Director of the Clore Social Leadership Programme

Jack also saw how high-achieving, socially-minded professionals often seemed to set their sights on careers in international development rather than making a difference in their own backyard. His own, ultimately unsatisfactory, experiences of international development inspired him to shift his attention to domestic social issues and to ponder why more people don’t aspire to social leadership at home.

After winning the Evening Standard’s Ideas for London competition, Jack kicked off Year Here’s pilot, a six-month leadership programme, launched at Number 10 Downing Street in March 2013.

Since then, Year Here has run 16 programmes, recruited 278 Fellows and launched over 40 ventures.