Discover the brilliant local initiatives being supported through our Community Fund
Last year we launched the SLN Community Fund, giving seven local community organisations the chance to secure funding worth up to £5000 towards projects creating opportunities and support for young people in the region. Read on to discover the amazing impact they’ve had…
At the end of June, we held a special celebration event at The University of Sussex to discover more about the seven projects supported through our Community Fund. In last month’s issue we found out about the positive impact The Sid Youth, The Juno Project and Friends, Families and Travellers had been able to have as a result of their funding.
This month we hear from four more community organisations using innovative approaches to break down barriers, create support networks and build unique opportunities….
Black and Minority Ethnic Young People’s Project
Vanessa Crawford founded the Black and Minority Ethnic Young People’s Project on the belief that ‘young people can’t be what they can’t see’. She established the group for 11-25 year olds, to provide local young people with positive, relatable role models who could both identify with their challenges, and open their eyes to opportunities they might never have considered.
The Black and Minority Ethnic Young People’s Project is a young person driven organisation, with the young people who are in the group determining which activities they would find useful. Many of the activities are also run by older young people for their younger peers.
Last year the group decided they wanted to set up a podcast as a way to get positive peer to peer messages out about the benefits of going to university and how to get there, especially for those who would be the first generation to go.
Our Community Fund provided the funds to enable the podcast project – run by eight 14-20 year olds - to get up and running, with the young people involved in everything from finding a studio to identifying themes for shows and writing scripts. They even found a young person who had studied Business and Marketing to run training workshops for them.
As a result of the podcast project, the young people involved have developed their own voices, increased their self-confidence and learnt a host of in-demand technical skills. In the longer term the team have enjoyed the experience so much that they’re keen to run their own training workshops to pass on what they’ve learnt to other young people.
Creative Waves
Creative Waves is a not-for-profit community arts organisation run in Worthing and surrounding areas, that promotes wellbeing and personal growth opportunities through projects with a creative focus. The group also transforms rundown physical spaces throughout the community with innovative creative projects that enable local people (including many young people) to play an active role in enhancing their local environment. The transformation of the rundown pier into a stunning local gallery space has been the organisation’s most high-profile project to date.
Our SLN Community Fund helped Creative Waves set up a new project to work with local neuro diverse students to help them celebrate their uniqueness and creativity with practical hands-on projects.
It also helped them to continue to create and run local arts projects to enhance the local area, with the help of residents. In Beach House Park in Worthing, the Creative Waves team worked with young people to transform a disused space into a creative, sensory garden with a willow dome, pond, community allotments and a bug hotel for insects to create a haven for people and wildlife.
Throughout March, the team also ran a pop-up studio in the park, with local children and young people creating art that is now displayed throughout the park to make the space more beautiful for all to enjoy. Creative Waves also runs free volunteering and mentoring sessions at the park every Wednesday.
Holding Space
Holding Space offers free peer support to any families whose children are struggling with their mental health. The support that they offer is unique in that parents can self-refer. They don’t have to wait on long, official waiting lists – they can access the help and support they need as and when they need it.
The group, which is all about empowering parents and providing holistic support, has only been running for three years and has already had 800 families through their doors highlighting the very real need for the service they are offering.
The SLN Community Fund enabled Holding Space, which provides one-to-one wellbeing support for parents and one-to-one counselling for parents and young people, to offer more of its popular face to face coffee mornings. Here, parents can find a few hours of respite, seek support, share tips and strategies and build vital friendships and networks with others in the same situation.
To find out more about the coffee mornings and the support that Holding Space offers click here.
Extratime
Extratime provides support to more than 200 young people a year in Brighton & Hove and West Sussex through after-school clubs, holiday schemes and family fun days; with the majority having Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).
Through the SLN Community Fund, Extratime was able to deliver new practical life-skills training sessions to SEND learners aged 11-25 at their youth clubs in Portslade. At a weekly Grub Club young people learnt basic cooking skills, while at further weekly sessions they learnt basic accountancy, communication, teamwork and home skills. Critically the young people involved in the project played a key role in deciding which skills they wanted to learn, to increase their sense of independence.
Thanks to the project, 15 local young people have been able to develop core life skills as well as new friendships and support networks, all of which have been beneficial to their personal growth, confidence, transition into adulthood, and future sense of independence.
You can read up about all our Community Fund projects in more depth here.