LGT’s Bright Futures mentoring programme is making a real difference to young people from the Gypsy and Traveller community. Two years into the programme, a formal evaluation has shown that many young people involved have moved into vocational education, training or employment as a result. Their confidence has grown – and they and their families have noticed the difference.
“Bright Futures has most definitely changed how I see my future,” one young person said. “I never imagined I would be at this place in my life.”
Bright Futures was launched in 2023 based on a simple but significant idea: that young people from the Gypsy and Traveller community deserve support that actually fits their lives. All too often, funded youth programmes are not designed to reach these groups.
Young people from Gypsy and Traveller backgrounds have often experienced prejudice, evictions, and exclusion from the institutions that were supposed to help them. LGT is highly aware that before a young person from the community can even begin to engage with support, a foundation of trust has to be built. This is the starting point of Bright Futures, which is for young Gypsies and Travellers aged 15-25.
“Many arrive having never been asked for their opinion, and thinking that asking for help, especially outside the community, is something to be ashamed of,” says Padmini Ravi, Bright Futures programme lead. “Peer pressure and community expectations can make accepting support feel risky – so the starting point is not where it might be for other young people. This is what the evaluation found: time spent building trust is not a delay before meaningful progress begins. It is the meaningful progress.”
LGT’s evaluation of the programme began in 2025, in partnership with the independent Mantle Consultancy, which specialises in organisational guidance. It asked what lessons had been learned about the programme’s development, approach and impact. The evaluation insights, published in two documents – a full report and a summary – are both available to download.
It concluded that funded programmes for this group must include time for trust-building and success must be measured in ways that make sense for the community.
The evaluation report includes the example of a young person who missed early Bright Futures sessions without notification but then started sending WhatsApp messages whenever he couldn’t attend. “That is not a small thing, says Padmini Ravi. “It represents a shift in expectations, a first act of communication and a step towards commitment.” This was recognised in the evaluation. “Our success may be different to your success,” it said.
The evaluation also documents how the Bright Futures team had to contend with the way the word ‘mentoring’ is understood in the community. For many, it carries assumptions that the mentor must be highly qualified, and therefore that the goal is to push young people back into formal education. The team worked steadily to replace those assumptions with an understanding that mentoring means a trusted relationship shaped around the young person’s own goals.
The evaluation report provides another example of a young man who joined the programme in Autumn 2026 aged 15. In the first few sessions there was limited eye contact and a reluctance to speak out. Working with the mentor at a steady pace, he mapped out his future plans in small practical steps, discovered a passion for design and was accepted onto a Level 1 design course at a local college. He even volunteered as a youth panel interviewer for Bright Futures recruitment – something unimaginable when he first started. His mentor said: “The change is noticeable. Now that he is off to college, we miss having his energy and enthusiasm around.”
The evaluation says that people in a position to bring change need to be willing to do things differently. It concludes that those who can fund, shape or deliver work with young people from the Gypsy and Traveller community need to recognise that:
- building trust takes time
- culture matters
- programmes need space to adapt, respond and grow, rather than being held to a fixed model, if they are to make a lasting difference.
People from the community who are already trusted by young people, and understand the culture, pressures and possibilities, are uniquely placed to support them in exploring their own paths and making decisions on their own terms, says the evaluation.
Read the full evaluation report here, a summary here.
Find out more about Bright Futures and get in touch with us here
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