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Big Leaf Foundation Summer Hive School 2020
Woking, England, United Kingdom
Aim
We aim to run summer classes in language and life skills for displaced young people, fostering wellbeing, self-care and community engagement
Who are you?
Big Leaf Foundation (BLF) is a charity committed to helping displaced young people create new lives for themselves in the UK. Our vision is of a community where displaced young people are valued, supported, and given the ability to create better outcomes for themselves.
What is this all about?
Displaced people arriving in a new country often find the experience overwhelming and incredibly difficult to navigate. Often cut off from everything that is familiar to them, these young people are particularly vulnerable to loneliness, isolation, boredom and anxiety. Big Leaf Foundation is a product of first-hand experience with displaced young people - our team saw an opportunity to change their situation and help them feel a sense of inclusion and belonging, within a network of their peers and the wider community.
Above: The values of Big Leaf Foundation are Trust & Transparency, Equality, and Growth. Supporting displaced young people through projects that help them build confidence and develop skills is a key component of our activity.
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What have you done already?
We connect with displaced young people aged 14-21 in Surrey and have provided a range of activities to promote engagement, education, and inclusion. To date, we have run and supported a number of regular events and projects, including work experience, education through art, confidence-building sports skills. BLF has also provided resources (Keep Talking; Music Connects) to help displaced young people with language skills throughout the COVID-19 lockdown, alongside safety guidance translations to help young people stay safe.
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Above: The Cafe Project: A collaboration between The Electric Theatre, Big Leaf Foundation and Lord Falafel. Together, our aim is to provide language learning, work experience and training opportunities for displaced young people in Surrey
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What do you want to do now?
We want to ensure that displaced young people in Surrey remain engaged with learning and development of skills throughout the summer. In this project, we will collaborate with The Human Hive, who have extensive experience at supporting innovative and engaging models of learning. Hive Learning is a model of education designed to make quality learning possible against all odds and to help learners thrive in challenging times. Our aim is to run a summer Hive Learning school, providing a regular weekday schedule of small-group classes in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and UK life skills to:
- Encourage students back to learning in a contact environment
- Provide a regular schedule of activities to continue engagement throughout the school holiday period
- Introduce newcomers to the basics of ESOL, ready for the start of the next academic year
- Foster a sense of connection to the community through UK life skills preparation sessions.
Why do you want to do this? Why now?
We have heard from key workers, foster carers and the young people themselves that the long period of lockdown has affected their mental wellbeing; it has been difficult for them to engage with college work, sometimes due to technical issues and issues of accessibility, but also because of boredom, lack of focus and a growing lethargy towards engagement of any sort.
How is all that going to work?
We plan to create a temporary outdoor space for learning in the centre of Guildford town with an inflatable classroom. Using this base, Big Leaf Foundation core staff and volunteers will run summer classes in English and UK life skills, with activities to foster wellbeing, self-care and community engagement.
What about social distancing and safety?
We have thought about that a lot! Delivery of the Summer School will follow the latest UK Government coronavirus advice, with all distancing measures and protocols embedded in the risk assessments for the activities we run. Furthermore, one of the UK life skills sessions on the Summer School will focus on keeping safe in the changing environment.
Sounds awesome! How can I support this?
To support this project, please make a donation directly through this Crowdfunder page. Any donation - small or large - benefits displaced young people through our work and is appreciated; please contribute what you can. If we hit our target, then any additional funding will go towards expanding the provision we can offer displaced young people.
What else can I do?
To find out more about how to volunteer to help Big Leaf Foundation on this or other future projects, please make contact with one of the team via the details on the website.
tl;dr
Big Leaf Foundation will use your kind donation to run language and skills sessions for displaced young people throughout the summer, to minimise isolation, ensure they stay engaged, and help prepare them for the next adademic year.
Thanks for your time.
Big Leaf Foundation
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This project successfully funded on 24th July 2020