Now you've seen the video, here is some info about how we pay for that:

Each year it costs about £350,000 to keep us running. This is a lot of money but we do a lot of stuff: we run a shop, upcycle furniture, help households with building, gardening work, maintain green spaces and 12 homes. All those bits make money and if that was all we did, we would be a successful business and a pretty nice and worthwhile one too.

However, we also have volunteers, and those volunteers can be as young as 12. They work in all parts of our organisation with the builders, in the shop, maintaining gardens and public spaces and renovating furniture.

Volunteers under 16 do bring a bit of money with them (from their schools) and this pays towards our training coordinator. Her role is to assess needs, work out plans of involvement, report back to schools, get to know parents and generally support the young person to move their lives on.

What it doesn’t pay for is the extra time it takes to do a job when working with a volunteer. Some of that time is about training, like answering phones, how to read a map or use tools, and some of it is about being a normal, accepting adult who they can talk to. Somewhere between a helpful work colleague and an aunty or uncle.

We estimate it costs £2,727 per young person per year to do that, which is pretty cheap for building self-esteem, communication skills, confidence, helping make the transition back into education, challenging preconceptions, dealing with self-harm, suicidal thoughts, loss of family members, breakdown of home life etc..                                

Four out of five (80%, if you prefer) of the young people we work with go on to education or work. They also leave us knowing about the working world, about where to go to get help, that it is OK to make mistakes and their lives aren’t over before they reach 16.

“It was really good for him, he came back an adult” Referring teacher May 2014

“You are the only positive feedback he has had in 14 months...If he just stays with you he can look for work in landscaping, knowing how to work, knowing how to use tools and knowing what the job involves” Parent June 2014

We make lots of small changes but those small changes add up to a big positive impact. By clicking on the donate button you can make a small change to us that will add up to a big positive effect.