Fulfilling destiny Kay Oldroyd, the Founder and Visionary of the Black Youth Achievements organisation; actively opposes the negative stereotypes that are largely associated with the young black communities and instead chooses to celebrate their success, accomplishments and their talents. Kay was also recently nominated for the Black 100 Plus (www.black100plus.co.uk) after the recognition of her work in helping and supporting the youth within her community. However, this incredible journey has only just begun for Kay and is just a small fraction of a larger vision that in due time will be manifested.

By Selina Besley

Kay Oldroyd, was born in Kingston, Surrey and spent her remaining childhood years within the London area. Some may think that Kay’s passion to recognise the achievements of the youth has been a long life dream. But surprisingly, this incredible vision only begun eighteen months ago, which led to the successful establishment of the Black Youth Achievements (BYA) organisation during October 2008. Being the Founder of the BYA, Kay described the organisation’s mission to recognise, reward and educate young people. Essentially, it is the BYA’s objective to provide young people with positive experiences, good options and extensive information that will help equip them through their work life as well as their personal and social lives. “The more information that you supply somebody with, the more opportunities that they have to make a good decision, which will enable them to choose the right path in life. It’s all about positivity.” Kay has successfully organised career days where she works alongside different business industries and enterprises to help the youth continually develop themselves within their chosen careers. “The purpose of these career days is to open more doors of opportunity for the youth and help to break down the stereotypical judgements that many youth have been pigeonholed into. On a whole, it shows young people that you can be so much more than music and sports, as black people are often defined as being individuals who can excel in music and in sports but nothing else”. Nevertheless, Kay continually acknowledges the positive abilities of the youth within the African Caribbean and mixed parentage communities; particular those ranging from the ages of 8 to 25 years, through a prestigious yearly awards ceremony occurring every November. “I organised an awards ceremony last year November and the purpose of the awards ceremony is to recognise all the good things that young people are doing. There are so many negative stereotypes that are reported every single day and this is what young people see. Every generation can aspire to be what they see or what they are presented with; so I want to provide ‘real’ role models and positive images of people within the community that they can relate to. “Instead of trying to emulate stars that they see on TV, they can emulate to aspire to be like somebody who is their next door neighbour, who has done really well.” Whilst Kay understands that there is a problem concerning ‘some’ youth in regards to the increase of knife crimes and postcode rivalry, Kay is absolutely certain that these issues are not all what the young people are about. “A lot of people have this idea that all black people are about knives and guns which can be disturbing for the stereotyped group. For instance, when I was handing out a flyer to a young man, he gave me back the flyer and said ‘I’m not into guns

and gangs’. So he had the expectation that anything that was delivered to him as a young black man was going to be around guns and gangs. It was disturbing that he had been pigeonholed in that way so much that he had no other expectation of what somebody was going to give to him. So I explained to him that the flyer is about recognising all the good things that young people do and his face lit up.” As a result of this occurrence and Kay’s increasing determination to elaborate upon the successes of the young, she remains committed to continually and positively affirm the youth as much as possible. However, Kay’s success does not end here as she recently was nominated for the Black 100 Plus Exhibition for making a change within the community and for successfully establishing the BYA. “I like to see change, I like to bring the best out of people and I like to see people succeed. I suppose anytime you’re recognised for something that you have done, it always acts as boost to show what you’re doing is a good thing.” In the near future, Kay strives to raise the bar higher and widen her horizons by venturing out around the world and into other UK cities, actively promoting the positivity within the young communities. Overall, it is her long term aim to integrate and form bridges. She is also currently drafting a new mentoring programme scheme and endeavours to open a training centre to train and inform the youth within the areas of CV development, interview training and various other activities that will help equip the youth for employment. Additionally, workshops in communication, first aid and debt management will also be conducted. Kay believes that everyone is born with a purpose. However, she strongly believes that parent’s have their fair share of responsibility in providing their children with a positive mentality as early as possible. “It’s not that the young people are bad, it’s just that they tend to fall into bad ways because of their environment or previous experiences. Parent’s need to be aware of the negative images that they bring into the home which can be detrimental to the growth of their young children. From six months onwards babies take in images and then what they take in is later manifested within their mentalities.” Kay is undoubtedly sensitive to the wellbeing of the youth and strongly agrees that everyone should find their purpose in life. “If you have got a dream, goal or ambition go for it no matter how small it may be. It’s not going to be easy; it’s not going to happen overnight and there will be some real difficulties and struggles along the way but I believe the more you struggle and the more difficulties you face, the bigger the reward.” For more information about the Black Youth Achievements or the 2nd upcoming annual award ceremony please visit www.blackyouthachievements.org