terrorist (Percival, 2008), and the youngest alleged suicide bomber (BBC News, 2015). There are now reports of a low level of social mixing between the Muslim and non-Muslim groups living in this area. Kumon Y’all is based in Savile Town, an area of Dewsbury with a predominantly (93%) Asian Muslim population (2011 Census). Kumon Y’all has engaged with young people through word of mouth to encourage them to take part in community volunteering projects and actions in neighbourhoods with a predominantly White British population. The befriending project is only part of Kumon Y’all’s activity, but one that lends itself to the timescale and resources for this research. Although previous work has generated a ‘theory of change’ for Kumon Y’all, its impact on the initiative’s aims has not yet been formally evaluated. This evaluation aimed to use this logical framework to provide clear evidence of the effect on both young and older people who have taken part in Kumon Y’all’s befriending project and to identify what works at a local level.
One of the key project aims was to reduce isolation and misconceptions between older and young people. Evaluation findings indicate that the project led to people feeling more confident when interacting with other communities and groups. Overall, young people’s feelings were already relatively favourable towards older people, perhaps because of the self-selected nature of participants. Even with this relatively positive starting point, the survey found the most consistent positive change in young people’s feelings was towards older people of different races and faiths. ‘There was this one White lady who asked why are not more Asian people thinking like me and I explained to her that we are not all the same, that some Muslim people do bad things but that our religion does not teach us to do bad things but to live in peace in whatever country you are. And she had more questions to me about all the things what the media says, and I think I was able to change that perception of what people think.’ [Young person, 17] Existing evidence (for example, Dovidio et al., 2011) has suggested that indirect contact can have broad effects, such as reducing intergroup threat, increasing intergroup understanding and trust, and reducing the experience of stereotype threat. Within this relatively small group we have not been able to explore whether the interaction has affected the attitudes of participants’ wider social networks. Kumon Y’all aims to improve the skills and competence of young people in challenging prejudice and racial hate by facilitating weekly sessions where young people take the lead in developing community actions, one of which was the befriending project. The focus groups and survey both indicated improvements in young people’s confidence in tackling misconceptions and misunderstandings, generated through their involvement in the project. The survey results suggested that the project had made most impact in developing participants’ leadership skills, providing young people with possible solutions to local problems and making them more comfortable about meeting new people. ‘We go out and talk about things with our friends. At the end of the day, it is just about misconceptions, but it just needs to be communicated more clearly. I make a more conscious effort now.’ [Young person, 18] There are a number of potential reasons for the more limited impact in reducing racism and prejudice in Dewsbury: