Promise Foundation

I'd like to see the Promise Foundation develop into an organisation that is a community effort. By that, I mean that it's led and supported by parents, the community at large and local businesses and that these groups are committed to promoting the potential of young people by offering them help, support, advice, direction and also through broadeni... ng their horizons. Does the Promise Foundation have a USP? Yes, it does. And our USP is that Promise is a collective responsibility. It's my challenge to this area of Queen's Park (and any similar area, too): if you are going to gentrify, then ensure that you serve the community; that you don't inadvertently displace those who are disadvantaged. For me, it's very much about social mobility and equipping young people with the correct social and academic tools to take on their world. So I'm thrilled that our mentors have embraced this collective feat! Was it difficult to get the whole project off the ground? It was quite difficult, yes and I certainly can't take all the credit. Many people, including Camilla, my sister Josephine, myself and others, we all worked incredibly hard to get it off the ground. We started off by harnessing the goodwill of the community and getting a working board together. And by utilising local relationships, particularly, that of Queen's Park Community School and one of our benefactors, John Fairburn, we managed to raise the start up costs and attract many gifts in kind. In all we raised about £100k over the first two years. How is it going so far? What sort of results and feedback have you had? Since our launch in July 2013, we have mentored dozens of young people safely and successfully and inspired many more mentors to act collectively to better their community. In our pilot year 80% of the mentees made progress in more than three subjects during the program. Their attitudes towards their work also improved significantly with 87% of mentees showing progress in more than one area of work. And as well as this, our mentees also received ...Read More