Founded in 2009, the National Citizen Service (NCS) is a voluntary personal and social development programme for 16–17 year olds in England funded largely by money from the UK Government. It was formally announced in 2010 by Prime Minister David Cameron. NCS became a Royal Charter Body in 2018. NCS is designed especially for 16 and 17 year olds, the NCS experience exists to engage, unite and empower young people, building their confidence so they can go out into the world and achieve their dreams, no matter where they are from or what their background is.

In 2023, the NCS Trust announced a significant investment to help young people, focusing on community-based experiences at a local level. These new experiences were aimed at complementing NCS’ existing away from home residential offering by providing more opportunities for teenagers to engage in local activities that foster skills development, deepen their understanding of the community, and empower them to contribute positively to its improvement.  The grants will also support organisations that cater to specific groups of young people who may not have participated in previous NCS initiatives.  The ‘Targeted Grants’ programme has been designed for scaling your existing interventions, or trialing a new innovation, with targeted groups of young people. NCS agreed to offer a variety of larger and smaller grants, creating opportunities for national or regional organisations, alongside small grassroots organisations.

It is this against this activity strand that Ethical Business Exchange worked alongside Bangladesh Youth and Cultural Shomiti to formulate a partnership of Leicester based delivery partners to bid for funding, which was successful towards the end of 2023 with an award of £92,000 being made. Partners include Highfields Centre, Youth Education Project and EAVA FM. EBE has subsequently delivered an impact and evaluation study of the highly successful project.