Yakub Patel

Yakub Patel is the third person to receive the Peter Scott Award for Outstanding Contribution to Charity. It celebrates his 16 years at the helm of Lancaster’s Marsh Community Centre and his role in helping to create the four year-old Lancashire Youth Challenge.

Yak was the first manager of the Marsh Centre, a community hub in the city’s most deprived district. Yak’s dedication and determination meant the Centre had the funds and resources to make it a popular, well used youth and community facility with daily activities. Programmes to protect children at risk of harm were set up and Yakub provided mentoring and guidance to young Asian men at the height of the race riots. His work to tackle territorial tensions resulted in sport, music and educational projects, including a cross community sports programme bringing together 120 young people.

At the time of receiving his Award Yak was the Chief Officer for Lancaster District Community Voluntary Solutions (CVS), an infrastructure organisation supporting over 800 bodies. Yakub is also a founder and trustee of Lancashire Youth Challenge whose aim is to change the lives of disadvantaged young people, aged 13-19, through once in a life time expeditions.

Yak used the grant that comes with the Award, of £2,500, to develop his long term vision to create an incubation centre for people embarking on social action programmes in the Lancaster District.