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Connecting Families: A TURN Community Project
Stramshall, England, United Kingdom
Aim
To provide young people and their families a project to build their resilience and confidence. Helping them relax, recognise and be rewarded
TURN Education opened in January 2019 as I took a leap of faith out of mainstream education into working for myself to provide young people with experiences to help them reconnect with themselves, their education and their abilities to succeed. I knew first hand how working and learning with animals had a powerful effect on young people and now use this experience to support a range of young people and their families. 
Since opening we have worked with a number of young people all of whom come to us at crisis point, desperate in their situation and very much disconnected. Many families can’t afford to undertake projects that have a cost attached and we are not funded by any charity or government body. We were successful in receiving a small amount of money to run four pilot projects and as part of our evaluation of these we have developed a families project to work for a minimum of 8 weeks with vulnerable families.
The funding would allow us to provide essential resources for the project such as wellingtons and waterproofs. We could purchase the physical resources for activities such as den building, campfires and animal care. We could purchase simple recording equipment to blog and log their experiences. It would ensure that the project would be totally free to the families. We could offer a transport subsidy to help them get to us and we could offer training to allow participants to return as volunteers on future projects ensuring that those who receive support support others.
Testimonials from our families talk about how their children feel
* safe and important
*empowered and cared for
* believed in
And families talk to me about how the projects we have run provide
* purpose and a place to be accepted
* a chance to change
* something to focus on when things aren’t great at home
We desperately want to do more and our next step to work with the whole family is a bold step to making sure that we are connecting families as well as individual children within communities to tackle underachievement and realise new beginnings (TURN).
NatWest Back Her Business has provided £750 of match funding
This project successfully funded on 16th September 2019