Stepping Stones

Paul Stack

We have been supported by the Rothschild Foundation over the past year to provide work experience opportunities partnering schools and other organisations who help young people with Special Needs to flourish and make their next steps into adult life.

The young people we work with have so much potential they just need a programme that is broken down in to smaller steps in order to succeed. Our working habitat is often a better environment for them to learn and flourish.

Some students have learned to look after primary school children as education rangers, others have been conservation rangers working at many special butterfly and river sites, others have worked in their schools to rewild their grounds for example. It has been so encouraging to see the young people we work with grow in confidence and because of the programme of small steps that we have provided them. This year’s project provided over 90 group sessions to young people from Alfriston, Stony Dean, Chiltern Wood, Aspire Shortenills & Ridgeview Homes with young people from other schools and adult volunteers from our community joining in with many of these sessions. Our film based at Beaconsfield, Walkwood will give you a taster of how we get young people of all backgrounds to make a difference in their local community.

We are currently honing our Stepping Stones to employability programme and looking for long term funding as we have special school and college providers queueing up to join in, there is so much need out there. Please contact our community projects manager, Paul Stack if you are interested in supporting this programme e.g. by volunteering (subject to DBS and references) or maybe your business could sponsor one of the programmes?

Watch the film on YouTube: youtu.be/YmAVwsaQ8kw