Writer's Block: Philanthropy
http://www.safeatlast.org.uk/ That is my charity. I've bored a lot of you with it already, but I shall repeat myself for anyone I haven't inflicted it on. :P
They're an awesome charity that works with and on behalf of young people who're at risk through running away in South Yorkshire. They use a fantastic model for their work that is based on both preventative and responsive work. On the preventative side they do work in local primary and secondary schools educating young people about the risks they might face through running away and offering alternative ways of either preventing them running away or making sure they can keep themselves as safe as possible if they do. That brings us to the responsive side. They run a 24 hour helpline. They have project workers who will do a number of visits to a young person after they've had an incidence of running away to try and help them resolve things so that they don't feel the need to do it again. They run a buddying scheme to support young people. As a last resort they have a refuge with two beds in it where they can accommodate young people who've really got nowhere else to go.
I've done preventative work with them. I did a month of voluntary work where a group of us used a small sketch to highlight some of the dangers as part of Crucial Crew, something which every year six pupil in South Yorkshire gets a chance to come along to. Then there's discussion about what they've seen and how it could have gone better, ending in reciting Safe@Lasts helpline number several times and giving them all the 'business cards' with information on.
The stuff I do on a regular basis is more on the responsive side. I get paid to work in the refuge as a careworker, where I look after a young person if we have to bring them in. I also volunteer on the helpline. We take calls from all over the country on the helpline, from young people or adults who've found or been given our number. We can only do direct work with young people in South Yorkshire, but we'll try and assist any young person who rings up, regardless of where they ring from. I've taken calls from all over the UK and several where I had no idea where the young person was calling from (sometimes they don't want to tell you).
I do this for many reasons. One is that I've been friends with the Director for ten years and she roped me into it. Another reason is that it can be really rewarding. The last reason is that it is desperately needed. Hooded young men and gobby oppinionated young women are not easy to work with, but many of them are very vulnerable. Social Services are always stretching their resources to the limit and when they have one bed and two children need it, one of whom is a six month old baby and the other is a sixteen year old the baby is much more vulnerable than the teenager, no question asked. However, that doesn't stop the teenager being vulnerable and they still need somewhere to go and someone to help them find somewhere safe to go more longer term if they can't go home.That's the gap Safe@Last fills. In the sketch we used for the preventative work I usually ended up playing the young runaway (I'm small, look young and apparently I do scared and frightened well :P). This runaway starts off cold, hungry, thirsty and alone in the park. She's run away after arguing with her Mum and being kicked out. Then some bullies come along and initally try to get her to get drunk and then beat her up. After the bullies have left her an older stranger, who has been watching all this, comes along and makes an attempt at befriending the young runaway, offering to buy her a sandwich and eventually, trying to get them to go with them. In our sketch the runaway realises that this would not be a good thing and manages to fight off the stranger. The thing is the sketch, while sounding action packed and over the top, isn't that far from the truth. It perhaps compresses the timeframe a little, but many of the young people we work with have been through all that and a lot worse and running away is really the only option left to them. We've worked with young people fleeing physical abuse, sexual exploitation, forced marriages, and domestic abuse. They're dealing with their own physical and mental health problems, drug problems, alcohol problems, crime, grief and self harming. On top of the general difficulties that almost every teenager faces.
So yeah, that's the charity I volunteer for and give money to. I think they're awsome and that every area of the country needs a charity like this one.