As Poverty and 主播大秀lessness Awareness Week comes to a close, we look at Urban Hope, a vibrant youth project based at St Stephen's Church in North London. The project runs after school activities for girls aged 11-18 from low-income families who are socially excluded in Islington.
Many of these young women live in poverty and have little or no personal support or a reduced access to life opportunities. This project is also an extremely crucial service for some women who are experiencing extreme crisis and/or hardship, unplanned pregnancy, homelessness and domestic violence.
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Urban Hope runs a girls club for 10-13 year olds, focusing on the development of identity and participation in the wider community. For those slightly older there are confidence and self-esteem courses. Workshops and courses cover a range of themes such as healthy living, beauty therapy, substance misuse, CV writing and cookery. Young women are also offered mentoring, advice, advocacy and crisis support on a one-to-one basis and in small group settings.
The Urban Hope Youth Project
主播大秀 Children in Need directly funds female youth worker Joy Faulkner who describes the young people she supports:
鈥淪ome girls come because they鈥檙e bored; their parents work long hours and are not around. There鈥檚 not a lot of money and not many opportunities. There can be issues with boys trying to control young women in local gangs. We鈥檝e had some fantastic success stories 鈥� one girl Abbie was pregnant at 16 but was picked to be an apprentice chef for one of Jamie Oliver鈥檚 restaurants. Another young person Jermaine is a now full time dancer- we see him on the X Factor!"
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Chloe, 15 talks about the support she鈥檚 received from Urban Hope over the years and the inspiration behind her short story 鈥楲ife Isn鈥檛 Me.鈥�
Chloe
"I think I've been coming to Urban Hope about 5 years. I got a leaflet about it in my letterbox. Me and my friends invited my cousin too and we've all be coming since. At Urban Hope I mostly talk a lot!! Recently I recorded a song with one of the youth workers. When I come to Urban Hope I鈥檓 normally cooking or on the computer or like mucking about with friends on the pool table or ping pong or other activities.
I think I've changed I鈥檓 more mature and I think I鈥檓 a better person because when I was little whenever anyone upset me I would say 鈥榶ou鈥檙e not my friend鈥� even if they only did one thing wrong. Now I鈥檓 a much more forgiving person and I don鈥檛 hold grudges against anyone. I get to hang out with mature people that make good choices and obviously that's really helped.
Life Isn鈥檛 Me is about a girl running away from home because she doesn't like the life that she lives. At home it鈥檚 just her and her mum so when she runs away she鈥檚 got nowhere to go. While she鈥檚 on her 'adventure鈥� she meets a boy called Nathan. He ran away from home but he could never go back and he encourages her to go back home.
I wrote it because at one point in my life I wanted to get away from it all. There was loads of stress and everything was going on in my head. I just wanted to run away but couldn鈥檛 find it in myself to do it鈥o I wrote a character to do it for me! The story says don鈥檛 make choices you might regret, sometimes stuff鈥檚 hard but running away isn鈥檛 the answer.
I鈥檝e never really thought about writing as a career, Life Isn't Me was something I started cos I was bored in a class and I enjoyed it so I carried it on till it was finished. I really want to do something creative, maybe in art, I love drawing."听
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