Making memories and thriving together – An update from us!

We’ve had the opportunity this year to make some fantastic memories together and have seen our young people thrive..

From the West Highland Way to a summer programme and half terms full of amazing opportunities and trips, we’ve given back to our community through volunteering, spent quality time at our favourite places as well as tried loads of new things like caving,  archery and ziplining together. It has been inspiring to see our young people take these new experiences in their stride and through them grow in confidence, sense of self and resilience by stepping out of their comfort zone, working together and encouraging each other.

Another big highlight was celebrating our community in the sun at our summer block parties! For one afternoon each, we set up our BBQ, DJ, and loads of games and inflatables at the heart of the Ashburton and Alton estates. It was lovely to catch up with parents and families, see our young people enjoy themselves together as well as see members of the wider community come down to join in on the fun. Such valuable time was spent vibing together and we feel really lucky to have had the opportunity to bring joy to friends old and new! Thank you to everyone who came down and brought such good vibes with them, and thank you to Roehampton Community Week for helping us to make these happen.

Our youth work has now continued into the new term and through half term, offering our new programmes like ‘Takeover Tuesdays’, Girls energy crew and coding workshops, as well as old favourites like football, different arts and crafts activities and cooking from Monday to Thursday, where we are now providing a hot meal every night of youth club. Through November we’re also hosting our employment programme, in partnership with Wates Construction, who will be coming in once a week to deliver workshops to help us ace things like CV and cover letter writing, as well as teach us how to impress in interviews.

And speaking of impressing! We are celebrating 9 amazing young people from The Feel Good Bakery, who have or are moving on to further employment, education and training in the coming weeks. We have seen such amazing progress from them over their time with TFGB and we’re really proud to see them move on towards their goals. Through having real work experience as well as access to mentoring and our ‘bridge’ sessions with progression and wellbeing manager Bella, we have been able to coach these young people and help them build valuable life skills and develop their goals and aspirations. We wish them all the best of luck and we can’t wait to see them continue to succeed.

This has opened up space for new baristas to be trained up and move through the service, and we continue to work with the great young people still employed with us.

We hope the good vibes will continue as we thrive together through to 2023 as we prepare for our Feel Good Walk and growing our team of TFGB supervisors and youth worker/mentors!

We can’t do any of this without support though, so if you’re feeling inspired and would like to help us continue to create opportunities for young people to thrive, we’d love to have you sign up to our sponsored walk taking place in January 2023, or alternatively you can make a donation here!