Month: January 2020

One of our young residents, Carl, has been accepted onto International Citizen Service (ICS) through one of their delivery partners, Restless Development UK. He’ll head out (fingers crossed) to Nepal in mid February with the rest of the young people on his wave. This will be an amazing experience for him to travel and work with other UK volunteers (and local volunteers) in a disadvantaged community in a developing country.

He is busy raising the £800 he needs to fund his placement. On Friday 17th of January, he completed a head shave in order to try and raise sponsorship.

    

We are all about empowering our young people so they access the same opportunities and aspirations as all young people. In order to try and meet this goal, Carl has also organised a small raffle of prizes donated by local businesses as well as a sweepstake for two pairs of Leicester Tigers tickets.

Please support Carl if you can, he will be doing great things to make a positive impact as an ICS volunteer. This will also be followed up with a 6 month “Action at Home” phase. Well worth a little sponsor. Please note, this money will go directly to Restless Development to fund Carl’s placement. You can donate here.

The Y launches Mummas and Bubbas – A new project to support vulnerable young women and their babies with group sessions and individual coaching in Leicester.

With a £9857 grant awarded to The Y by Leicestershire & Rutland Community Foundation using money from the Governments Tampon Tax fund, They Y is launching “Mummas and Bubbas”. The project will provide twice weekly group parenting sessions, training, workshops and individual coaching to support these young women even after they leave our service. The primary aim is to help more vulnerable young women achieve the skills and confidence they need to thrive as a parent and increase the likelihood of mother and baby being able to remain together.

The Y has been working with vulnerable young women for over 15 years in Leicester. Each year, several young women need to leave the service due to pregnancy. Some young women returned to the service after having the baby removed from their care and the number of babies removed from these young women were disproportionately high. Most felt that if they had parenting classes and ongoing support, they would have been able to keep their baby.

Paul Brown, CEO of The Y said:

“The Mummas and Bubbas project will enable The Y to deliver a specialist wrap around support service to young women in our service who are pregnant or have recently become a mother. We’ll be working to reduce the need for intervention and give these young women the tools they need to meet their aspirations for themselves and their child.”

Katy Green, CEO at Leicestershire and Rutland Community Foundation said:

“This funding supports the groups on the ground that are making a huge difference to the lives of women and girls. We know there is huge demand out there for these services and are proud to help small organisations working in our community to access vital public funding, which otherwise they may miss out on.”

Christmas can be a difficult time for many, including for some of the residents we support at The Y. Showing love, compassion and support is a great way to spread the spirit of Christmas.

After an overwhelmingly successful appeal back in 2018, we asked again for Leicestershire locals to support our residents and provide them with a gift through our Christmas Shoebox Appeal.

With this initiative, we asked for shoeboxes filled with donations to help brighten a young person’s Christmas. Items which were requested ranged from shower essentials to cooking equipment with a long list of other treats. 

The donations came in fast, and again, we were left astounded by the support of the community. 

We received approximately 800 boxes from individuals, businesses and local groups alike. Here are a few amazing schools and businesses who supported us during the Christmas period:

 

• Marriott School
• Orchard Mead Academy
• Forestway School
• Leicester Grammar School
• Beauchamp College
• Cedar Academy
• Falcons Primary School
• Leicester Univerisity Student Participation and Engagement
• All Saints, Scraptoft

 

• Chubb
• Play Barn
• St Leonards Church, Swithland
• RSMUK
• Impact Air
• JudgeMeadow
• Asda
• Braunstone NHS
• Kierann Shah and the Space Centre

 

We also had many other individuals who kindly donated to which we are hugely grateful for. We would like to give an enormous thank you to all those mentioned and everyone else who made a donation, big or small to support our residents during this festive season. 

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and send best wishes for 2020!