No dedicated fund or institution for young men's civic engagement

The Centre for Social Justice's Lost Boys work documents male NEET numbers up 40 per cent since the pandemic against 7 per cent for women, suicide as the leading cause of death for young men aged 15 to 19, and a drift towards online influencers and right-populist politics. John Smith Centre polling confirms young men are markedly more right-leaning and distrustful than young women. No UK funder runs a dedicated programme for young men's civic participation; Rosa and the Tampon Tax legacy funds exist for women and girls, and there is no counterpart. Youth engagement programming demonstrably under-recruits young men, and government activity stops at school-level role-model initiatives.

Young men are the fastest-growing disengagement cohort and the group most exposed to online radicalisation pipelines. Their civic attachment is currently being formed by influencer ecosystems nobody accountable runs. No institution owns the problem.

A pooled multi-funder programme for young men's civic participation: mentoring, male youth worker recruitment, offline third spaces and sport-plus-civics models, with a commissioned What Works evidence strand at Youth Futures Foundation or a new centre.

// Build now: First artefact: pooled multi-funder programme with commissioned What Works evidence strand at Youth Futures Foundation.

The fastest-growing disengagement cohort drifts towards online radicalisation with no funder owning the problem, so a pooled programme is high-value and ready without a dated trigger.