Prince’s Trust opens in Birmingham today

The Prince’s Trust Weston Centre, which is situated on Digbeth Street, only a short walk from the Bullring, opens its doors today. The new centre provides a skills and enterprise hub for local young people, which will contribute to the charity’s overall aim of supporting one million young people over the next decade.

The Centre, named after one of its funders the Garfield Weston Foundation, will provide employability and enterprise programmes with the aim of building the confidence and skills of young people to assist them into education, training or employment.

The Centre also received funding from the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP, whose chair, Tim Pile said: ” It is a real achievement for Greater Birmingham that the Prince’s Trust has opened a centre that will help so many young people to realise their potential as the region’s next generation of business leaders.”

Michele Farmer, Director of Central England at the Prince’s Trust said: ” This centre will help us to grow the delivery of our programmes in the West Midlands, enabling even more local young people to live, learn and earn. We are very grateful to the Garfield Weston Foundation, and to all our funders and supporters, for all they have done for the Prince’s Trust.”

Young people like Alexander Rhys, from Birmingham have benefited greatly from the help they received from the Prince’s Trust. Alexander got help and advice from the Prince’s Trust Enterprise programme, which not only helped him to cope with OCD but give him the direction and skills needed to achieve his ambitions.

Alexander now has a thriving business selling art globally, has 12.5k followers on instagram and has exhibitions in the UK and overseas.

Alexander said: ” Its quite scary to think where I’d be without the Prince’s Trust. Before I found them I was very depressed and had no direction. I tell everyone I meet that my success is down to the Prince’s Trust – they saw the spark, they gave me hope and they believed in me.”