We've teamed up with YES (Youth Experience in Sport), a London charity that's spent the last thirty years helping young people into grassroots sport. We're rather chuffed about it.
What it means: every event booked through Canvas now sends £5 to YES. Christmas party, conference, whatever else is in the diary, you get a brilliant venue for it, and a young person somewhere in London gets a little more opportunity.
Who YES are
The charity was built on a simple idea, which is that sport is about considerably more than the final score. Being part of a team gives you confidence, resilience and the feeling of belonging somewhere. And having the right people around you at the right moment can genuinely change how things turn out.
For three decades they've supported grassroots organisations working with young people, particularly in communities where other kinds of support have quietly dried up. These days that means money going to sports clubs, youth centres and sports charities around London, so those places can keep giving young people somewhere to turn up to.
A good chunk of it goes on coaches. YES calls the good ones 'gold dust', which sounds about right — a club isn't a building and a bag of gloves, it's whoever's there every week, knows your name and makes it worth showing up for. Sport is sport, but it's also friendship, somewhere safe to spend your evenings with adults who rate you, and working out you're better than you thought.
West Ham Boxing Club is one of the clubs they back. Young people from the area learn discipline, pride and focus there alongside the boxing, and it gives them somewhere to put their energy that's safe and properly on their side.
What that's got to do with us
Canvas is here to take the hassle out of booking venues. You find somewhere great, you book it, everyone has a good night. That's a fine outcome on its own, but an event can stretch a little further than that.
So now, whether you're a client booking a space for your team or a venue logging an event, that booking feeds into YES's work with young Londoners. It counts on both sides. We cover the £5 ourselves rather than adding it to anyone's bill.
You book your event. That's it. And every one of those fivers is a small part of something bigger: a kid finding a club, meeting a coach, getting into a team, growing in confidence, or having somewhere decent to be on a Tuesday night.
Next time you're booking
Office Christmas party, client dinner, summer celebration, or somewhere nice for a few drinks with the team, whatever it is, it now does a bit more than fill a room.
