Drive Forward is organizing a Christmas event to celebrate the success and accomplishments of young care leavers in London. Throughout our employability and life skills training programme, we have seen young people making great efforts, developing new competences and gaining confidence and self-esteem. Some of them have already found a job, are doing an internship or got into higher education. We want to recognise their hard work with a community Christmas dinner and some fun rewards!
Each year about 10,000 young people are leaving the care system in the UK, branching out on their own, and receiving only minimum support. With a third of them being between 16 and 18 years old and with almost half of them neither being in education nor training, care leavers are a high risk group regarding mental health issues, homelessness, drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, and criminality. We believe that given the right support, they too can embark on their chosen career track.
People who have joined us this year have made remarkable progress in terms of professional and personal development; they have worked hard to get one step closer to achieving their goals, be it in employment, work experience or training and education. With our Christmas event we want to show these young people that their efforts don't go unrecognized, as well as reminding them that they are not alone, but part of the Drive Forward community, which will continue to support them on their path.
It is important to us that the young people we worked with know that Drive Forward won't let them down once they completed the programme. Especially at Christmas, young care leavers are reminded of what they have been denied for most of their life, a caring family and someone to count on. Knowing that we offer continuous support and advice - be it with employment, training or money issues - stimulates peoples' motivation and efforts in the long run, allowing them to lead better lives!
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
