STUDENTS from North Bromsgrove High School have been taking part in the Dame Kelly Holmes ‘On Track to Achieve’ mentoring programme.
The year nine and ten pupils have been working with our time BMX World Champion mentor Kelvin Batey, carrying out a social action project with the charity of their choice ‘The Basement Project’.
The 15 selected students have been busy creating gift hampers ‘from girls to girls’, which were inspired by this years Mental Health Awareness Week theme of ‘Anxiety’.
The charity supports young people aged 16 to 25 with any issues they are experiencing, particularly around homelessness and the prevention of homelessness.
As well as a drop-in service, floating support and a mediation service, the charity also has a foodbank.
The students also collected food donations at school, which contributed towards the outreach scheme to provide families in the local area with food parcels during the school holidays.
In total, the students helped package 180 food parcels which will be distributed to 12 schools across Worcestershire.
Katy Brierley, the school’s pastoral support and intervention co-ordinator, said: “We are so proud of our students supporting an important local charity.
“They have made such thoughtful hampers with messages of inspiration for other young people and the food parcels they have helped with will really make a positive difference to families in the local community.”
Kelly from the Basement Project said the charity was so grateful for the continued support from North Bromsgrove.
“The gift hampers the girls have made are so thoughtful, not only containing essential items, but treats and words of kindness.
“Our clients are all experiencing difficult times for a number of reasons, including family breakdown, domestic abuse and mental health difficulties.
“Being able to gift them such a lovely hamper will be a real boost to their wellbeing, so thank you so much.
“The girls were also fantastic helping us to pack food parcels to go out to local families in need.
“A total of 180 parcels have been requested by 12 schools this half term, so many hands really did make this task light work, freeing up our support workers to be out in the community providing much needed support to local young people.
“The ‘On Track to Achieve’ programme really is a fantastic scheme as it is great to see local young people getting involved to support their peers.
“We are very grateful to Katy, Kelvin and the students for choosing to support us as part of this scheme.”
