The UK government’s Cabinet Office has announced the launch of seven new social impact bonds which will help disadvantaged young people, children in care and those with long-term health conditions and mental illness.

The seven new SIBs will bring the current number in the UK up to 31, more than the rest of the world put together. Four of the new SIBs will be funded by the Youth Engagement Fund, and will support up to 8,000 disadvantaged young people to improve educational qualifications and secure employment.

The Fund, which aims to find new ways to address challenges facing disadvantaged young people, includes £10 million from the Cabinet Office, £5 million from the Department for Work and Pensions and £1 million from the Ministry of Justice.

The Social Outcomes Fund will provide £2.5 million to support three additional SIBs to help people with long-term health conditions, mental illness and children in care. £1 million will support a SIB to support 8,000 people in the north east with health conditions such as lung disease, diabetes and asthma.

Click here to read the full report from Civil Society Media, published 20 March.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London is also preparing a $7.5 million social impact bond, introducing this growing form of nonprofit financing to the realm of the arts, according to the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The stage complex on the banks of the River Thames, modelled on the original Globe Theatre that burned down in the early 17th century, hopes to secure investment to pay for a new library, archive, and research centre.