July 2008

Dear Supporters,

Prospex win an award

On Wednesday 16^th July “The Centre for Social Justice” held its 4th Annual CSJ Awards ceremony in London. Prospex, along with six other charities tackling poverty in the UK, won an award and a cheque for £10,000.

The evening was held at the premises of JP Morgan Asset Management in the Grand Hall and was hosted by Esther Rantzen.

Our award was collected by Beef and was presented by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. It was an inspirational and emotional evening leaving us feeling that we are part of a bigger picture and also allowing us to do some great networking.

We were entertained on the evening by Flava, a youth dance group who were runners up in TV’s “Britain’s Got Talent,” and we also heard from a young person from the XLP project who gave a chilling performance about a real life school friend who was shot dead in his bed.

Our award money will go towards employing a family support worker which has been made possible by this and another generous donation from The Garfield Weston Foundation. Thess will give us basic funding for an initial year but we will be seeking to make this a long term appointment.

Prospex Street Team

Our detached work has been renamed and will now be known as ‘Prospex Street Team’.

We have spent some time this month evaluating our street work, through which we make our initial contacts with the young people on the local estates. We looked at where and how we work and who we are working with. The results have led us to re-define the boundaries of our work. We have split it into three zones and must now dream about what we would like to do if funding allowed.

The next stage is to make contact with all the youth and community providers in the area, to see how we can work in partnership. Our plan then is to build a regular team of sessional workers to work in all three zones. We are also looking to have Prospex T shirts / jackets so that everyone will know who we are and to raise our visibility.

Prospex Life

We have now completed our second Prospex Life course for Holloway School with a residential on a farm in Cranleigh. We were blessed by good weather for almost all the weekend and it was a real success. The weekend included building fires, rowing, raft building, night hikes, quad biking, off-roading and tractor driving. As well as all this the young people completed many team challenges, engaged in a spot of fishing, came up close and personal to the cows and generally got exhausted.

The residential helps the whole course to slot together and we are looking forward to more in the future, although the winter ones will be challenging!

We are talking with the school about more this year and possibly throughout 2009, so watch this space.

 Prospex Works

We have started a project in partnership with the T.M.O. (Tenants Management Organisation) of Bemerton Estate. This estate is one of the most deprived estates in central London and we have worked for many years with different groups of young people who congregate on the estate. The T.M.O. have decided to engage the young people, through Prospex Works, to do some of their regeneration work. The first project was to paint the railings around a new herb garden that has been created by the residents. This was done on the 2^nd July.

Hopefully this will be just the first of many projects with which we will be involved. Five of our young people have been involved so far in working on the project.

Prospex has seen two young people through an exciting placement as commis chef in the Crown Plaza Hotel. Both young people have gone on to secure interviews with Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant to become apprentices for 18 months (if successful) as chefs in the Fifteen Restaurant. Their interviews were on 21^st and 25^th of July…… Good luck to them both.

Prospex Families

The advert for this post will be going to press this month so we hope to have someone appointed and starting before the year is out. This is exciting as it has been a dream of ours for a long time and an essential part of our work.

If you are interested or know of anyone who may be interested then please keep checking our website for details.

As we go to press another very generous donation for 10K has been received for our Prospex Families Project.

Prospex Xtra

Thanks to the generous support from a trust we are making plans that will engage young people in learning new skills and enterprise.

In brief we aim to transform half of the centre into work shops and the other half as the drop in. The workshops will aim to offer NVQ level 1 or similar qualifications to young people over the year, with six young people setting up a business at the end with our continued support.

Our first plan is to make flowerboxes and pyography (burning patterns into wood) which will be the development of a project that we have already tested and that has gained a lot of interest. After the first year we would change the workshops to a new skills set so that the young people have a chance to make a go of the new business without us flooding the market.

This project takes us into new territory as an organisation by working to offer recognised qualifications in order to really help young people with their job prospects.

The workshops should also enable us to generate some income through the training and ensure that the building is used to its maximum benefit.

We will keep you updated on the progress of this so watch this space.

PS Do you have a skill you could offer to share in this respect? If so, let us know.

“Who Am I”

This month “Who Am I” features Veronica Nolan (volunteer accountant)

I am an accountant currently working for a venture capital company in Chelsea. I am originally from Tipperary in Ireland and have been in London for 9 years now.
 
I joined Prospex as a volunteer in 2004 because I wanted to do some voluntary work with a children’s/young people’s charity and offering my accounting skills seemed like the perfect thing to do especially when Prospex was desperately looking for a replacement accountant at the time.
 
When I first joined I used to come to the charity once a month to prepare the accounts, but now I do all of the work from home. I come to the charity once every few months for the trustees’ meetings which is great for a catch up on what the charity is currently up to.

The Prospex Team & Young People.

Prospex Drop-In Centre 

Opening Hours - August 2008