About us

The Foundation was established in July 2006 by Rod Aldridge, the founder of the Capita Group, to further the work of his charitable trust.

The Foundation is primarily focused on the effects of educational underachievement and social exclusion on the young, but also in removing the barriers to the reform of public services in general.

The Foundation is a small dedicated team. At the heart of its work, The Aldridge Foundation is the sponsor of two Academies - Darwen Aldridge Community Academy, near Blackburn, which opened in September 2008, and is scheduled to move to its new, state-of-the-art town centre location in 2010, and the Brighton Aldridge Community Academy, which will also open in 2010. Both specialising in Entrepreneurship and Sport, they seek to encourage both business and social enterprise in the young, developing skills such as passion, creativity and determination in students.

The Foundation engages with projects where we believe, through our involvement, we can make a real difference and where there is opportunity for matched funding or better from third party sources to accelerate the pace of implementation or the scale of change. In particular, The Foundation wishes to tackle difficult and contentious social issues promoting innovative and practical solutions through working with appropriate delivery partners.

The projects that The Foundation has been involved with in the past, is currently working on or plans to start shortly, are as follows:

• The Aldridge Foundation and v fund the "We Are What We Do (WAWWD) Young Speakers Programme". The scheme created 200 new volunteering opportunities in 2008, for 16-25 year olds across England, and inspiring a new generation of community action and social change. WAWWD's previous projects include Change the World for a Fiver and Plastic Ain't my Bag.
• The pilot phase of the Essentially Dance programme is funded by The Aldridge Foundation.  The scheme aims to take ballroom and Latin American dance to every child in the country, through training school teachers to deliver the activities as part of core PE provision.  The Foundation collaborated with Darren Bennett and Lilia Kopylova (best known from the BBC's 'Strictly Come Dancing'), as well as dance teachers Dale Bennett and Lorraine Drolet, and physical education expert Sue Cooper.
• Reach Out brings together Participle, The Aldridge Foundation, Brighton and Hove City Council and the London Borough of Croydon. The project will design new ways to strengthen young people’s relationships with themselves and with supportive adults within Brighton and Hove, and Croydon. The goals of the project are to create new opportunities and forms of support for young people that are ‘authentic’ and dovetail with their every day lives.
• A contribution for five years towards the establishment of a Centre on Public Sector Partnerships at Birmingham University to encourage the working together of public, private and third sector organisations to achieve improvements in public services. This draws upon the experiences of the past and encourages new innovative solutions for the future challenging current thinking by policy makers.
• Several contributions were made to towards the cost of administering The Prince's Trust xl programme designed to assist those young people aged 14-17 who are at risk of underachievement or exclusion from school. The Trust approached 1,000 clubs in schools across the UK influencing the lives of over 15,000 young people.
• A pilot project for young offenders to be rolled out nationally. The Prince's Trust 1-2-1 project,which will focus on stopping the high percentage of re-offending that is experienced at present. The programme will be delivered mainly by people who have offended themselves in the past and successfully reintegrated back into society, offering 1-2-1 support for current young offenders.

In addition, we are involved in a number of other upcoming projects around youth engagement.