Rochdale Youngsters Head for Downing Street for Award

Date published: 16/09/2005

Six young women from Rochdale travel to London next week to find out if they are the winners of a challenge aimed at helping young people to be financially more aware and less excluded.

Shanty Begum, Komal Siddiqi, Atifa Shah and Saima Butt, all from the Asian Young Women's Forum, and Sarah Greenwood and Laura Barnett from Street Cred are attending an awards reception at 11 Downing Street on Tuesday (20 September). The reception is hosted by Ivan Lewis MP, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury.

The young women have taken up the 'Thrifty Squid' challenge to create the idea for a film, which deals with how young people are financially excluded in society.

They are being helped with creative and design advice by Kikass, a youth charity, who have helped them to develop their ideas. And there could be more excitement for the ladies following the reception in Downing Street. The overall winners will spend a day as guests of Barclays on an overnight trip to Portsmouth. There they will set sail on the Barclays Adventurer, a luxury round-the-world racing yacht.

The results of the challenge could even help the Government to better understand young people's financial awareness, to help them tailor future support initiatives to meet the needs of young people. Barclays Bank and youth charity Kikass are backing the Thrifty Squid Challenge, which is also supported by HM Treasury and the Financial Services Authority.