Rebecca Bunger

Head of Youth Work and Partnerships, The Way Youth Zone

Rebecca is a passionate advocate for youth empowerment and community transformation and has been in the youth sector for 12 years. She leads innovative projects that combine safeguarding, employability, and creativity to help young people thrive. Rebecca has pioneered dynamic safeguarding toolkits for staff and designated safeguarding leads (DSLs), tackling critical issues like exploitation and online safety in Wolverhampton and the West Midlands. As well as this, Rebecca sits on on a number of working groups looking to tackle exploitation and serious youth violence in the area. Known for her collaborative spirit, Rebecca partners with organisations to build safe, inclusive spaces where young people can dream big and achieve more. She is particularly passionate about how the youth sector acts as a safe third space for young people, and supports schools to provide extra-curricular activity, pastoral care and investment, the burden of which falls heavily on schools.

1 Workshop series one

Partnering for impact: How and why Invictus Education and The Way Youth Zone are bringing education and youth services together

Redeveloping a school site is much more than a building project. It's a wider opportunity to rethink how the school estate can deliver more value as a community asset. This session shares the emerging and innovative thinking between a school trust and a youth centre (part of a national movement) to make the case for the design and build of new schools with purpose-built facilities for the delivery of youth services outside school hours. You'll get an insight into the vision that is driving this discussion to improve the life chances of young people, the practicalities of shared facilities design and co-location of services and take away ideas and inspiration for developing civic partnerships.