BIG Adventures for young people

Aim

To future proof Longridge we need to do three things; the first is to create new, innovative and exciting adventurous activities.

Who are we? 

For nearly 100 years we have been giving around 80,000 young people every year the chance to have life-enhancing outdoor adventures from our river-side centre just outside Marlow. We offer a whole range of activities including kayaking, climbing, laser tag, dragon boating, and much much more.  Young people can visit us for the day or stay longer in one of our tented villages.  We are always looking for ways that we can use our beautiful natural location to help our community and currently have young people being educated in pupil referral units using  our river-side pastures as their classroom, as they find it easier to learn whilst outside and active than sat in a classroom - we are loving having them around.  We have provided homes for Ukrainians, worked with various prisons to provide rehabilitation for offenders and so much more.  We need your help to make many of our plans permanent and ensure that we can continue with all the work we do for our young people and provide a base for the various clubs and teams that rely on us for their training.

The last few years have been tough for a whole host of reasons and if it wasn't for our wonderful team we may not have made it this far. We have survived and now we want to thrive, to do this we need your help to Build replacements for our tired and flood-damaged facilities and create Innovative ways for our visitors to have an adventure.   This will help us Grow and welcome even more young people.

Who do we work with?

We offer many ways for people to access our activities and programmes and to benefit from life-changing experiences.

We are open to families, schools and a variety of youth groups with children and young people aged from five to twenty-five with range of abilities and needs.   They come to us to have fun, learn new skills, and to build confidence – they leave us with many memorable experiences and new friends.  

Why are we Crowdfunding? 

We want our local community to be a greater part of our future, not just by using our facilities but also helping us to create them.  By developing more activities and building better facilities we can provide more opportunity for everyone.  

Through our Crowdfunding venture, we want you to be part of our future adventures and help us to achieve our ambitions to support even more young people.

Recovery, Reinvention and Building Resilience

Covid was a difficult time for Longridge, being shut for so long had a significant impact on our facilities.  However, it did also give us time to really think about our future and how we can reinvent the centre to be able to support even more young people and survive future shocks.  Our plans (which you can read about in more detail on our website), will future-proof Longridge to enable us to welcome more young people, for more of the year for at least another 100-years - hopefully longer.

How we plan to make the best use of the new funds?

All our activities are designed to encourage our visitors to work beyond their boundaries, learn about risk, and overcome their fear.  We want to build confidence and most importantly offer a lot of healthy, physically challenging fun. 

In planning our next steps we have talked to our young people and their carers and we know that we need to continue to provide opportunities for ALL young people whatever their needs.  So all our projects will be adapted to provide access for all whatever their abilities. 

We want to:

Bring back swimming by creating a safe, dedicated area where young people can learn about open water safety. Sadly too many young people die in our rivers every year because they don’t know about the dangers so we want to teach as many young people as possible the skills to keep them safe. We will also replace our pontoons to improve access to the river for more people (including our new members) and our clubs.

We want to introduce more boats - in particular, stand-up paddleboards that can carry more than one person.   These are great for your younger visitors who would benefit from having someone with them.  We would also like to some fixed-seat rowing boats to encourage teamwork and pulling together!

On the land, we want to add more high and low ropes activities, creating a bouldering wall to complement our climbing tower. This fantastic equipment will also provide us with some much needed storage space

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways that you can help us to reach our target and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge and don’t delay as momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word, the more people who know about us the more support we will get.  Talk about our project and share our story on your social media pages, you can use this link https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/big-adventures-1 in your post and it will bring you straight to this page

3. Offer rewards. If you are a local business we would welcome any donations of time or gifts that we can offer our supporters and in return we promise to give you a shout-out!

4. Fundraise. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, maybe a sponsored activity or similar, use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and  you will be on your way to sharing your fun idea!

If you have heard enough about the positive impact that we have on people’s lives then please make a donation to support our campaign.  If you would like to know more then please read on or visit our website - www.longridge.org.uk 

We are here for:

Families

Many of our visitors are meet the Longridge team for the first time at one of our Family Open Days which we run on Bank Holidays throughout the year.   We offer a chance for everyone to experience what we have to offer for as little as a £1.

At one Open Day our CEO talked to a tearful Mum who was stood by the climbing wall watching her son as he scaled the heights above.  She explained that they had been coming since our first open day in 2019.  She remembered that he had needed lots of encouragement to attend as he was a quiet and introverted boy who had struggled to make friends since coming to the UK.  However, he really enjoyed the experience and as a result signed up for a climbing course.  

His Mum went on to explain that since then she had seen a real change in his behaviour at school, his teachers noticed and commented that he had become more outgoing and confident.  So why the tears?  She smiled, pointed to her son and said, “you see the boys that his is climbing with – they are his friends, we bought them with us today”.   

Schools

Schools can visit us for the day or stay on site for a few days – giving many children  first experience of staying in the outdoors and being in the countryside.  Not every child had had the opportunity to walk on wet grass or recognise a cow in field. Cows look very different (smaller) in books!  Earlier in the season we had 192 children from Year 7 getting to know one another, in a new school and a new year group.  The noise levels and enthusiasm were wonderful and what a great way to get to know each other!

Young visitors

Our ‘Forest School’ programme allows children as young as three light fires under very safe conditions.  Seeing these young children return to their parents grubby, smelling of wood smoke and having painted their faces with blackberries – with huge smiles on their faces – is a joy.  One Dad told us that he has noticed that since his daughter did our Forest School, she is bolder and keen to have a go at more things.  And is getting into a lot more scrapes as a result!

Learning and gaining qualifications

Courses are integral to what we do and we help and support young people to gain NGB qualifications and we even train some up to instructor level.   

Kasey joined our beginner 6-week kayak course having not had any previous experience.  To say she was reluctant to do the course is an understatement, Kasey was scared and yelling as her Mum tried to stuff her into a kayak with increasing  frustration and embarrassment.  We decided the best course of action was for one of our qualified instructors to take over to see what he could do.  

Taking a slow and more gradual approach was the best approach.   Kasey sat on the riverbank and just watching during her first session, before Simon (instructor) encouraged her to sit in a kayak on the land and they went through the use of the paddle from the safety of dry land.   By week three, and with her Mum in the car, Kasey not only got in the boat, but she also left the bank and paddled along the backwater, closely followed by her now personal instructor, Simon.  

By the end of the course it was time for Kasey to complete the test for her British Canoeing 1-star certificate.  To earn this they need to capsize a kayak which is a scary thing for anyone to do and made Kasey very nervous as watched all the others in her group manage to do this successfully. 

With support and encouragement she agreed to have a go.  Simon got out of his boat, stood waist-deep in the water, and held her hand all the time whilst Kasey capsized her boat.  As she came out of the water with a mixture of pride and elation is a face that nobody who saw it will ever forget.  This was just the start of Kasey’s success as she has gone to be a member of Marlow Rowing Club and is winning medals!!!

Trainees

Poppy has Down Syndrome lived at home with her Mum, had never had a job with little opportunity of a social life or hobbies. – her world was quite small and life was increasingly challenging.  Poppy got involved here at Longridge firstly as a volunteer a  few days a week where she proved herself in supporting our activity team and demonstrated a great understanding of young people facing challenges.  In 2019 she joined our trainee scheme, then our apprenticeship and this year has joined our instructor team and is living on-site. She is one of our most popular instructors and it fantastic to have her with us for another season.

Apprentices

Dan was introduced to us by one of our volunteer kayaking coaches.   He is a  cheeky live wire who for a number of reasons was not always at school and he left with no  academic qualifications and a criminal record.  Dan would agree he was a challenge at first and he had very little support from his family to take on an apprenticeship. It was not always easy but with plenty support from our senior team Dan stayed the course. 

We run a programme with HMP Springhill, where our apprentices do site work alongside our HMP Springhill volunteers.  It was after one of these sessions, that our CEO talked to Dan and he said “you know Manda, I don’t ever want to go to prison”.  And he didn’t.  He was top of the class in all areas and at our graduation ceremony he was awarded Apprentice of the Year – voted for by all his fellow apprentices.   The whole Longridge team could not have been prouder at that moment and we are pleased to say that Dan is now a permanent member of the team here.

Young people have always been at the heart of all that we do and by listening closely to our users, we are certain that our new sports are those that will excite, charm, and encourage our young visitors to move into their future with confidence, not afraid to try new things, enjoy physical activity and be able to appreciate our beautiful natural environments safely. Your support will enable us to create these activities and offer even more young people the opportunity to have an adventure with us.

We want you to be part of our adventure and allow Longridge to dream BIG and thrive.

THANK YOU

And if you would still like to know more, check out this video that some up-and-coming young filmmakers made for us: www.youtube.com/embed/Vet7_39olsA?wmode=transparent 

This project successfully funded on 31st July 2023