Small grants that gave excluded and at-risk young people a way back in, through climbing, canoeing, mountain biking and mentoring outdoors.
Some young people find outdoor activity through a school trip or a holiday club. Others find it after everything else has already been tried: exclusion, a spell in care, a caution, a father who isn't around. For the charities in this feature, a climbing wall, a canoe or a mountain bike isn't recreation. It's often the first thing in months that's made a difficult young person want to turn up.
Written off, and starting again
Challenge4Change runs an Adventure Club for young people across Trafford and Salford, many from low-income families and already identified as at risk of offending, excluded from school, or drifting toward long-term unemployment. The club builds toward the DofE and John Muir Awards, but its real job is re-engagement. Andy Jackson, from the charity, is direct about who the sessions are for: "young people society has written off... displaying poor decision-making that could result in them participating in anti-social risk taking or criminal behaviour." A Foundation grant covered two months of activity costs so the club could run regular evening and weekend sessions rather than the occasional one.
Path Hill Outdoors works alongside the charities Teenage Wilderness and 2Wild, running therapeutic and educational programmes for students who've had, in their own words, "very disadvantaged lives" and moved through multiple schools and the care system. Their flagship project took four educationally disengaged students on a week-long canoe and survival expedition to Stora Le in Sweden, preceded by months of canoeing, bushcraft and survival training. A Foundation grant provided the shelter and kit some of the students had no way of affording themselves. As Abbi from Path Hill put it, "this alternative type of education re-engages individuals with learning, and gives them a positive outlook."
Climbing back into education
Endeavour works with 13 to 25 year olds who are missing from education, have learning difficulties, or come from disadvantaged backgrounds, running personal development and social action projects designed to build the skills to face setbacks head-on. A Foundation grant funded 18 weeks of introductory climbing sessions for 90 young people. As the charity's Graham Booth explained it, climbing pushes people out of their comfort zone in a way that translates directly: reaching the top of a wall gives someone a concrete, undeniable sense of achievement, one that can reshape how they think about an exam they're dreading or a job they doubt they'll get. Staff also noticed the sessions doing quieter work, breaking down the barriers that stop young people communicating with each other and with adults.
Mountain bikes, paddles and mentoring
Newstart Education Centre is an Alternative Education Centre in the Lower Falls area of West Belfast, working with young people excluded or disengaged from mainstream schooling. As part of Strive, a six-week programme for 14 to 24 year olds delivered with Include Youth and partner organisations, Newstart used a Foundation grant on the safety and group facilitation equipment needed to run outdoor sessions using mountain biking, mountaineering and paddle sport in any weather. David Gibney, who applied for the funding, said the aim was to tackle drug and alcohol misuse, mental health difficulties, behavioural challenges and violence at home directly, work that reaches more than 150 young people, parents and others through the centre's outreach each year.
In Redditch, Boys2Men takes a different route to a similar end. Set up by community worker Phil, the charity supports boys aged 11 to 14 who are underachieving at school, mostly through a 'dads and lads' programme built around adventurous, outdoor time together. Phil set up the charity believing that "every boy is looking for a mentor to lead them through their challenging teenage years," standing in for the father figures that, by the charity's own estimate, over a million families in Britain don't have. A Foundation grant funded new camping and cooking equipment soon after Boys2Men became an independently registered charity, having spent its first six years operating under the Redditch YMCA.
The Alpkit Foundation supports projects that enable people to overcome the obstacles preventing them from Going Nice Places and Doing Good Things. Find out how to apply.