Building a Better Future

Aim

To run a project consisting of various workshops and mentoring sessions to help young people gain a good understanding of financial skills

Here are STORM Family Centre we do a variety of activities, of which youth work is included. This new project is for young people and to help enable them with the tools to manage their finances well.

Our background as a charity

Marie Hanson MBE, UPF Ambassador for Peace, is the founder and CEO of the charity STORM Family Centre. A former conservative councillor for the ward of Queenstown in Battersea, Wandsworth, she also does public speaking alongside her community and charity work.

Established in 2004, her charity has been serving the community by providing services such as counselling for domestic violence sufferers and survivors, and for women and children who have suffered sexual abuse and also has a focus on youth work and general wellbeing. The charity started with 4 women and now works with over 3,000 women to date, and also with over 1,000 young people. The acronym S.T.O.R.M stands for: Support, Trust, Opportunity, Rebuilding and Motivation - and the vision is to help people in need of support; particularly focusing on members of the local population within the Black ethnic minority community as well as hard-to-engage groups. S.T.O.R.M is committed to addressing social issues such as sexual violence, sexual exploitation, domestic abuse, poverty, long-term unemployment, and youth crime.

Marie is a survivor of domestic violence herself. After fleeing her abusive partner with five children and also heavily pregnant with her sixth, she spent several nights sleeping in her car with all her children. Painfully, even after her and her family suffering all the trauma and impacts of violence, one of her daughters told her that they also tragically suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the abuser. Through all the indescribable pain that she and her family endured, she maintained that her sufferings would not define her.

After escaping with her family, she decided to pursue a career in cosmetics for the new start for her and her family; she eventually created her own make-up line and was offered a very lucrative job in America in the cosmetics industry. After careful consideration though, she turned it down to start a new role that she truly believes was heaven sent, and STORM Family Centre was established. The subject of surviving and overcoming is something that Marie has made part of her life’s work.

Since she formed STORM, Marie through her charity continues to tirelessly work for those who have suffered and survived domestic violence and abuse, as well as being there for many in the community in need of employment help, childcare services, career & training courses, and extensive youth work. STORM also has its own nursery complete with sensory room to cater for Special Educational Needs children and for children who have suffered trauma and abuse.

Our project

At this moment, we are asking you to help us launch our new project for young people, an initiative simply entitled: ‘Building a Better Future’; a venture all about helping young people with everything regarding financial wellbeing. Everyone needs good advice about their income, and we believe that young people are no exception. In fact, our youth need extra help with such necessary information, and what better way than to have a series of activities geared just for them that’s all about financial wellbeing. 

Special help for our youth

This project aims to bridge the gap between young people just beginning to learn about money and the sometimes-complex world of finances. With knowledge of good money management at an earlier age we hope to help them have greater confidence with decisions about spending and saving what they earn. With this project, we also hope to engage youth who may be on the edge of anti-social behaviour and encourage them to live more positive lifestyles through financial independence.

The importance of this covers:

• Knowing the value of money
• How to save for the future
• Responsible spending

We plan to share such knowledge with them by workshops, discussions and presentations plus more; we aim to have:

• Interactive workshops on saving, investing, and budgeting
• Presentations / testimonials on the world of finance from guest speakers
• Trips to financial places of interest
• Computer sessions on internet banking
• Informative resources to give participants
• Discussion sessions to foster & garner ideas about financial wellbeing
• General mentoring and coaching of our youth

With our youth work, we do a variety of things including running a youth club, to holding seasonal activities for young people across the borough of Wandsworth, London. And our activities don’t just include fun with indoor and outdoor games, but also with our music studio and photography studio & workshops. We love to make creative outlets for our youth and endeavour to provide such avenues to help alongside their general education for their wellbeing and happiness.

Nurturing future growth

To continue with helping youth to find new paths in life, we thought that showing them all about an integral part of everyday living would be most beneficial, and so we are delivering our project – ‘Building a Better Future’. If young people can learn about money matters from their formative years, such education will greatly benefit them in latter days

Aside from the overall benefit of knowing good financial knowhow for well living, we believe that this project will also help young people on the verge of anti-social behaviour to turn from negative lifestyles; by giving them new confidence while pointing them in the right direction of positive living. Reoffending remains high despite government spending on offender management in the last decade. There is little change in reconviction rates; half of those released from incarceration re-offend within 12 months, and this pattern is consistent with offenders aged 10-17. If we can show the benefits of stability in everyday living through something like the necessity of managing money, we believe that it can go a long way in building confidence, teaching value of life, and in steering young people away from wrong lifestyle habits – albeit through a new angle of education.

We aim to help young people with different ways of education to help them thrive in their lives, whatever their station in life, and we aim for this project to help young people in wellbeing all round.

Where the funding will go

This project successfully funded on 28th June 2022