Christmas is here!

ReachOut! is full of the spirit of christmas after some wintery themed events this week.

The team welcomed over 100 volunteers and staff to the ReachOut! Christmas Party on 3rd December. It was a great chance for volunteers to meet other volunteers from across all the London projects, get to know the ReachOut! staff and for ReachOut! to say a massive thank you for all the hard work this year (and we love any excuse for a party)! Scoll to the end for photos...

The Queen Mary ReachOut! Fundraising Group braved the cold for a day of festive cake selling. QM students and staff treated themselves to giant muffins, gingerbread men and homemade cake all in aid of ReachOut! Great job guys - they look tasty!

From everyone at ReachOut! - Merry Christmas and we look forward to seeing you in the new year!!

ReachOut! Academy Volunteer of the Week - Joanna Deagle

Joanna Deagle

Jo has been coming to the project since September and has become a vital member of the Wednesday mentoring team! Working with a young man who is very difficult to engage, Jo has absolutely risen to the challenge. Charlie, the Project Co-Ordinator, commented on her mentee’s change in attitude - “he is now channelling his energy into the work rather than using that energy disrupting others.” Furthermore, Jo has offered to volunteer on more days, particularly impressive considering Jo works incredibly hard.

Thank you Jo!

Disappointed but not disheartened!

The final score may have been 9 - 1 to Cantelowes but the brand new ReachOut FC U12s girls team were in high spirits after scoring their first goal in a competitive match and playing the game of their lives!

This year the ReachOut! Academy has started a new girls football project for girls in Y6 and Y7. Every Monday the girls attend football coaching followed by an academic session where they get help with homework, maths and English from volunteer mentors. On the weekend they play in the Capital Girls League against other teams from around London.

It’s been a slow start to the season, losing a couple of games to nil (and one 5 – 1 thanks to an own goal by the opposition!) but the commitment and determination shown by the girls has impressed referees and opposition mangers. Their spatial awareness and understanding of the game has improved massively, as have their fitness levels.

It was a tough match on Saturday against Cantelowes, one of the best teams in the league according to the referee, and at half time the score was 7 – 1, but the girls’ heads never went down and they battled on through the second half chasing down every ball and keeping the second half score to 2 – 0. A great achievement considering their stand in "manager" (yours truly) knows next to nothing about football!

Well done to them all!

By Fran Blackwell

ReachOut! Academy Volunteer of the Week - Arrigo Beino

Arrigo Beino

Arrigo Beino is the most positive, resilient and affable person I’ve ever met. Arrigo has been working with the Year 8 group for the past eighteen months. As some of you know this is a challenging group. Arrigo coached this group the whole of last year, which involved taking football sessions with them on a Monday and giving up his Sundays as he took them to matches on Wanstead Flats.

This year Arrigo manages the Under 14s B team, coaching them on a Tuesday and taking them to matches on Saturday at Hackney Marshes. He also attends Under 14s A matches when Pete needs the extra support.

Arrigo does not let things phase him. After an incident with two pupils on Tuesday he got the rest of the group settled and carried on with the session. He’s always smiling and has more staying power than Occupy London.

Mille grazie Arrigo!

ReachOut! Academy Volunteer of the Week - Kavita Choitram

Kavita Choitram

Kavita has spent two weeks climbing Mount Kilamanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, and instead of deservedly resting up in the evenings she came to the ReachOut! Academy and on her return was Supermentor, helping several mentees understand quadratic functions!

Good work Kavita!

ReachOut! Academy Volunteer of the Week - Georgie Simmonds

Georgie Simmonds

Not only because of the staying power (one of ReachOut!'s core values!) Georgie illustrated when her bag disintegrated due to the weight of her law notes, but because of her expertise in quadratic functions, managing to get masses of young people through the equations!

Georgie has been an amazing volunteer for ReachOut!, starting half way through last year’s project, she has built a great relationship with her mentee, who always makes a B-line for her in the mentoring sessions and who in fact often asks about Georgie on the weekends.

Well done and thanks Georgie!

Y11s on the ReachOut! Academy

A couple of Y11s (preferring to remain anonymous) finished their work early at the ReachOut! Academy last night so I asked them to jot down a couple of lines about why they come to the project. As promised, I have posted their thoughts below…

“We are 15 year old students that go to The Petchey Academy. Our favourite sport is football. And we are very social.

We heard about the ReachOut! Academy as our friends told us about it. We come to play football but also they help us with out English and Maths work and homework.

We come to ReachOut! because it keeps us off the streets, most of our friends come and we enjoy playing football. They help us with work to help our grades which is amazing and it’s helped us a lot in school.”

Thanks to both of them for their comments!

ReachOut! Academy Volunteer of the Week - Mike Niles

Mike Niles

Mike ruptured the cruciate ligaments in his knee two weekends ago, he emailed me more concerned about missing the project than the state of his footballing career. He made an incredible, four legged-hobbling return to the project this Tuesday which reminded me of when Martin Keown played an entire football match and found out afterward that he’d fractured his ankle in the second half.

On a more serious note, Mike’s eagerness to return was due to the fact he had just started to work with a young man that really needs his support. They worked exceptionally well together on Tuesday and I’m delighted to see his mentee engaging when in the past he has been one of our hardest to reach young men.

Mike hobbling off on crutches after the project brought a tear to my eye.

A huge thanks to Mike for all his efforts.

Jack Bond

Volunteer Profile: Sophie Richardson

Name: Sophie Richardson
Current occupation: QMSU President
ReachOut! history: Mentor, Cayley Primary School, 2007/08

“I found out about ReachOut! in my second year at Queen Mary through Provide Volunteering. I thought it sounded like a really great way to give something back to the local community and I had experience of working in schools and with young people that I wanted to build upon. I was placed in a primary school on Ocean Estate in Tower Hamlets and was a mentor for some of the girls in year 6. The other mentors in the team were volunteers from QM too and so it was a great way to meet other students.

We ran a two hour session once a week, the first hour being sports focussed (the girls we worked with were so competitive!) and the second hour being one-to-one mentoring. My mentee was a keen writer so we focussed on her literacy skills and later, on her numeracy skills. It was a great feeling knowing that I was able to help a young person develop and grow personally over the course of the year, particularly on the run-up to leaving her beloved primary school and moving on to the big world of secondary school!

I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a ReachOut! mentor and was quite sad to say bye to the girls I’d worked with at the end of the year. The experience will stay with me forever I’m sure and the opportunity to complete my OCN Mentoring qualification with ReachOut! was fantastic. The skills I learnt served me well on my Erasmus Year Abroad (a compulsory part of my French and Linguistics degree) as I ended up teaching 10 year olds in France.

One of the reasons I think students are so great as ReachOut! volunteers is because we are young and able to connect well with the pupils. More importantly though, I found that as a ReachOut! volunteer I was the first person the young people met who had been to university. Some of them hadn’t realised there was a university right across the road, let alone know someone who had been! So to be broadening their horizons and introducing them to the prospect of higher education was something I felt really quite proud of.”

Top Boy - oh so predictable, but realistic?

I was informed yesterday that as a charity worker aiming to help disadvantaged young people in Hackney I MUST watch the final episode of Channel 4’s Top Boy last night. With no time to catch up on previous episodes I whizzed through the video clips on the C4 website to get up to speed and the first thing that struck me was how much Ra'Nell and Gem, the unfortunate and gullible 13 year old school boys, reminded me of some of the children at the ReachOut! Academy - they looked like them, behaved like them and even talked like them – no one could fault the actors for being unrealistic.

The storyline was fairly predictable for a TV drama (Dushane, a disillusioned 20-something feels his only chance at a decent life is to deal drugs, he takes advantage of vulnerable teenagers, draws them into trouble, deal goes bad and someone gets shot) –that’s just good TV, but I'm not trying to belittle it. The stark reality is that young people in Hackney are exposed to gang culture, violence and drugs on a regular basis through the news, playground and estate gossip, older siblings and perhaps even directly themselves, with the scary effect that they have become desensitized to it all and perhaps even accepted it as just another part of life.

Perhaps for me, the saddest moment of the series was at the start, when Dushane convinces himself that he has no hope of a future that doesn’t involve crime. It echoed comments from some of our ReachOut! kids who often don't expect to do well at school, land a good (or any) job and struggle to see the point of working hard because it won’t change anything anyway; they’ve grown up in Hackney and feel that Hackney is what has determined their identity.

Top Boy should raise the question for all of us – how can we (yes you too) convince our young people that they can break the trends of unemployment and crime and not choose (yes, as they say in Dangerous Minds – you always have a choice) a life where violence and drugs are all too prevalent? What are we doing to help?

Drama and actors aside, Top Boy is a representation of a youth culture that has become famously associated with the area of Hackney. While we need to acknowledge the existence of such a culture, it is crucial that we address it too. Our work at ReachOut! strives to do just that….

Frances Blackwell

What makes a mentor?

My first experience of anything like mentoring was far from formal. When I was in year three my patron saint was a lovely year six girl with a brown bob and a red puffa jacket. She taught me how to French plait my hair and that boys are only horrible because girls are really scary.

When I was in year six myself I was hustled into “mentoring” a year three kid, Priyan, who was struggling with reading. A few times a week, for that year, I would proudly march off to the playing field with a book wedged under my arm, hunt down a reluctant Priyan and help him tortuously pick his way through Biff Chip and Kipper for half an hour.

A few years ago, in my hometown supermarket I bumped into a grown-up Priyan; he grinned at me then shot off as if he still expected me to give pursuit. At least he remembered me!

This summer at the end of a long day in a failing Tanzanian school a boy approached me with a question. With only weeks left until his finals he still couldn’t get his head around wavelength and frequency; his only teacher was in hospital and his parents didn’t understand the language of the textbook.

And so what keeps me coming back? Because that moment when everything slotted into place and his eyes lit up was a total gift. Because what comes around really goes around. Whether its two hours a week for a full year, a couple of months or the length of one conversation, whether it’s through a formal scheme or a playground friendship, everyone deserves positive mentoring experiences, even if they don’t always define them that way....

Liz White

ReachOut! Club mentor

Mayor's recent aims reiterate ReachOut!'s core vaules

Boris Johnson has echoed Nick Clegg’s recent comments about the need for more government funded projects across London to tackle emerging problems that have shaken the city over the last year. After months of government cuts, riots and protests, it seems that the coalition is finally taking note of the need for more schemes like ReachOut!’s mentoring projects, to provide role models and support for children in some of London’s most deprived boroughs.

In his speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this week, Boris said:

"Instead of washing their hands of young people having a hard time in school, these clubs will instill a firm sense of purpose, focus and motivation. Instilling discipline and giving young people positive role models and structure can have an amazing effect."

These comments show real commitment by the Mayor of London to our objectives here at ReachOut! – to provide positive role models to set examples of fairness, self-control, good judgement and staying power whilst promoting leadership, trust and responsibility in our young people. This also proves the relevance and necessity of the projects in the current political and social climate.

The ReachOut! Club (formerly the Midweek Mentoring Project) is due to restart at the beginning of November. The project places university and sixth form students as mentors to year 6 pupils in schools in Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Throughout the academic year the mentors provide individual academic support to their mentee, as well as encouraging and inspiring them, at an after school club once a week. The ReachOut! Club is just one of the many projects the charity runs for its young people.

Now in its eighth year in London, ReachOut!’s dedication to work within the local community and provide positive role models has always been at the centre of every project it runs. The recent national focus on the need for these values confirms the importance of supporting local charities.

To find out how you can support ReachOut! or for more information about the projects, please visit http://www.reachoutuk.org/HTML/Funders/support_us_home.html.

Charlotte Goodhart

Nick Clegg reaffirms need for summer schools as ReachOut!'s Summer Programme is in its eighth year

On the final day of the Liberal Democrat party conference, the leader of the party proposed a summer school scheme as a response to the riots that took over London in early August. During his keynote speech to his party on Wednesday, Nick Clegg highlighted the need to invest in programmes that would prevent young people from going 'off the rails'. Suggesting the introduction of summer schools and youth projects as a means to tackling these issues, Clegg argued that “Too many of those young people had simply fallen through the cracks, not just this summer but many summers ago when they lost touch with their own future."

The Deputy Prime Minister's concerns take us back to ReachOut!'s own Summer Programme this August. The proposal strikes a particular chord with the ReachOut! project, being a voluntary scheme and targeting a demographic that is directly referenced by Nick Clegg in his speech.

The ReachOut! Summer Programme is based in Hackney, one of the areas worst hit by the riots this summer, and the team were forced to close the school briefly as a result. However this August, the charity ran its eighth such programme, and the project, which provides a constructive way to spend the summer for young people and children from across east London experienced its most successful year ever despite the disruption.

As the country reflects on the summer and looks towards the next, ReachOut!'s work with young people seems even more relevant. In these analytical months after the riots, voices from across the political and social spectrum ask what it is we can learn from them. The growth of programmes like ReachOut!'s is absolutely crucial.

Clegg also talked of the step up from primary to secondary school, and the problems that face pupils moving from year 6 into year 7. This is an age category that the charity's ReachOut! Club (previously MMP) directly works with. Again, reliant on volunteers, the term time project aims to assist this often difficult transition, aiding not only academic success but also personal development and self esteem.

At a time of increasing difficulty for the charity sector and raising national concern about our young people, support for ReachOut's projects is vital.



Charlotte Goodhart and Steph Pickerill

ReachOut! hits campus to recruit volunteers.

As freshers get settled into student life, ReachOut!'s recruitment for its volunteer projects began this week. With over 100 volunteer places to fill, the term time projects will begin in a few months.

This year ReachOut! is excited to announce some changes to it's projects, building on the success of previous years and offering more volunteering opportunities than ever before.

Now in its eighth year, the ReachOut! Club (previously known as the Midweek Mentoring Project) is being run in 8 schools and recruiting over 100 volunteers. The mentoring programme runs across primary schools in Hackney and Tower Hamlets, once a week during term time.

A change to the ReachOut! Club this year is its co-ordination. Last year found the charity running a few projects with student volunteer coordinators, having previously used only paid employees for the role. Following from the success of this, over 90% of this year's projects will be run by volunteers, a move that has introduced huge opportunities for both the charity and the volunteers.
Chantelle, a history student at Queen Mary, volunteered on an MMP during her 2nd year, at Cayley Primary School in Stepney Green. The one to one aspect of the sessions is something that really stoods out from her experience; 'most of all it was working with a child on a regular basis, getting to know them and seeing them improve, especially their confidence levels'. Chantelle is going on to run a project herself.

The ReachOut! Academy is new to the ReachOut! timetable this year. The project is loosely based on what used to be the Soccer School. It will run at The Petchey Academy in Hackney for children and young people aged 7-16. As well as academic work, the sessions include football, arts and crafts and dance.

Both programmes are particularly suited to students for a number of reasons; taking up just one afternoon or evening a week, volunteers can fit the sessions in around their studies. It is also a chance for students who have come from outside of London to get away from campus and get to know the local area. As each school is assigned a team of volunteers, it is a great way to mix with students from other courses and from institutions across London while enhancing CVs, gaining valuable skills in leadership, communication and teamwork. Students are an invaluable asset to ReachOUt! and their commitment and enthusiasm run alongside the core aims of the charity.


Those interested can register to become a mentor on the website www.reachoutuk.org or come and see us at Queen Mary Freshers' Fair on Wednesday 21st and Thursday 22nd.

Artistic Makeover at ReachOut!

The ReachOut! Summer Programme had a creative makeover this year with the generous support of UK manufacturer of folders, British Loose Leaf, and London art supplier, Cass Art.British Loose Leaf (BLL) is a company based in Kent that designs and manufactures folders, ring-binders and files. From their range of school supplies, BLL generously donated a folder to each secondary school child attending the project. The products are a work of creation themselves; known as ‘Create-Your-Own’, they allow students to use their own design ideas and interests to create a unique and fun place to store their schoolwork.

‘I like the folders because they are artistic and creative; you can make them unique to match your personality…they are so different to other folders you can buy in any shop.’ Georgia, 14.

‘I enjoyed making the folder remind me of ReachOut!,’ Abiola, 13

Cass Art consists of 5 art shops around London and aspires to ‘fill this town with artists’. Supplying both professionals and amateurs with top-quality creative materials, Cass Art kindly gave ReachOut! access to their extensive range of stock for school children. Much of the selection combines creativity with learning, a key aspect of the summer project. The Art classes this summer included a collage of footprints (above) entitled 'When I grow up' and posters where students worked to represent ReachOut! and their experiences visually. The Art and Drama classes at the programme were taught by Rosie and Chipie, 'We are really grateful for the equipment that was donated this year, the kids had a lot of fun!'
ReachOut! would like to thank Cass Art and British Loose Leaf for their generosity this summer. http://www.cassart.co.uk/ Their flagship store is in Islington.

Steph Pickerill

A look back at the ReachOut! Summer Programme 2011

Last week, the most successful Summer Project to date came to an end. In its 8th year, parents, pupils and staff were invited to attend an afternoon of celebration as the project closed and we looked back at the achievements of ReachOut!’s young people and volunteers over the past year.
Certificates were presented to attendants of the Summer Programme to award effort in maths, English and science as well as sports, dance, drama and Art.
Volunteers were also celebrated as ReachOut! awarded its Summer Programme volunteers as well as its volunteer mentors from various projects throughout the year; individuals who have committed from 30 to 100 hours of their time and without whom, the projects could not go ahead.
The presentation ceremony was intermitted with impressive dance acts from the Summer Programme and parents and carers were able to view a beautiful display of the children’s art work.

We also heard from Ed Lehmann (left), ReachOut! Chair of Trustees, who thanked the volunteers, The Petchey Academy and the ReachOut! staff. ‘its fantastic to be involved in something like this, something so positive, where so much fantastic, constructive energy is funneled into making our community and our society a better place to live. We at ReachOut! firmly stand for education as a cornerstone to a civilized society, we believe education is the thing that we need most of all... in building a society we can all feel proud to be a part of… we want next summer to be even better!’
The event was run and hosted by the team of Junior Mentors. The team decorated the hall, compèred the ceremony and hosted a drinks reception to round of the afternoon.
ReachOut! would like to thank the Ernest Cook Trust, Jack Petchey Foundation, Help a Capital Child, Garfield Weston Foundation and Macquarie Group Foundation for funding this project.

Steph Pickerill

ReachOut!'s Youth Project

Kaitllene designing a t-shirt in a fashion workshop

Reachout! Junior Mentors Programme is a scheme aimed at young people aged 15 - 16 that runs alongside ReachOut!’s Summer Programme. Thirty young people applied to be mentors.
The mentors could apply to be Teaching Assistants. They assist teachers and coaches in the planning of the lessons and the teaching of the booster classes in maths, English and science as well as sports.
The young people can also apply to be business mentors. The business mentors plan and prepare a tuck shop. The profit from which will go towards an excursion at the end of summer for the junior mentor team. The business mentors also plan events like the ceremony at the end of the Summer Programme including the talent show.

In the afternoons the young people often attend trips, some are for fun like ice skating and bowling, while others are for skills-building like visits to businesses.
Jack Bond, the senior mentor in charge of junior mentors programme, believes that the programme benefits the young children in the summer programme as the junior mentors provide positive role models; ‘they have a better understanding of them since they’re closer to their age and most of them go to the same school so they know each other and talk to each other’. Many of the Junior Mentors have been themselves attending the Summer Programme for years.

Kenneth is "wowed" by Jack!

The Junior Mentors Programme provides an environment that teaches the young people about helping others, working as a team, communication skills and commitment to a project. Most of the junior mentors believe that this opportunity is helping them grow as young people since they are doing something positive with their summer. Declan Farhe, 16, a sports mentor, thinks that the programme is a good way to spend your summer; ‘you’re not just wasting summer, you’re doing something good with it.’

Reachout! rely on volunteers to help it run successfully and by volunteering the junior mentors are gaining work experience as well contributing to their community. This is helping them prepare their CVs. As well as volunteering, the junior mentors are also juggling revision and are anxiously waiting for their GCSE results. This is a great example of young people keeping busy and active, something which seems to be key with the recent concerns about youth in the community.
Kaitllene Koranteng,15

Insight to the ReachOut! Staffroom

Chantelle and Lucy discuss lessons in the "maths" corner.

The Summer Project is now into it’s third week of the best year yet. This is largely thanks to a great team of staff made up of 15 full-time teachers and 28 volunteers. Students make up the majority of this, coming from a range of London intuitions. Some have been with the charity for years, others have got involved recently.

Dorian, a 3rd year medical student at Barts University of London, has been volunteering with ReachOut! for 6 years; ‘The project is a great way to spend your summer and you don’t feel like you’re wasting your time.’ Dorian is teaching Science to Y5 and Y9 boys. ‘ReachOut! is giving students a chance to do something they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.’ The project is an opportunity to gain experience.

Rachel, 19, recently finished her 1st year of psychology at UCL and is teaching maths to Y5 boys. Working with ReachOut! for less than a year, this is far from just a summer job for Rachel; ‘it is so important that we give local kids these types of programmes so that they have every opportunity for their futures, are able to apply themselves in some way, to be positive contributions to society. What we’re doing, I think, is the antithesis to the riots.’

The ReachOut! staffroom - always a hive of activity.

For others, the experience has played a major part in shaping their own career decisions. Rosie is going into her 3rd year at Royal Holloway University and teaches drama and art on the project. ‘This experience has reaffirmed my ambition to be a teacher.’

The teaching this year has been impressive, with every lesson planned by a qualified teacher and all staff receiving ReachOut! training. Kevin, a recently qualified teacher, is working on the Summer Project as a science teacher. He sees this as more than an academic pursuit, ‘We need to reengage with the community, the children need to know that someone cares about them,’ Programmes like ReachOut!’s are providing ‘consistency and that sense of what’s right and wrong that is crucial to these kids.’

This year’s team vary in age, experience and teaching ambition but they all share the enthusiasm, drive and dedication to ReachOut!’s aims that have helped make the Summer Project such a success.
Thanks guys!

Steph Pickerill

Staff relax with some dodgeball at the end of a busy day.

ReachOut! kids respond to Hackney riots

The Summer Programme is back on!

Many teaching staff have spent lesson time today leading discussions about the recent rioting with the children. The views are varied but there is a clear feeling of sadness amongst many of the groups.

One year 6 boy spoke of his disbelief, asking his English teacher 'why do people from our area destroy our shops?' This concern and shock about the local community, Hackney, is typical.

A girl, year 4, told her maths class that she thought the behaviour of rioters was 'immature and disgusting'. Another year 5 pupil expressed the severity of the event: 'it's not funny'. Others shared their experiences, many having personally witnessed trouble. A year 5 boy talked of his family's smashed car windows while others spoke of relatives and friends across London that had been directly affected.

Key stage three English lessons had pupils writing about the riots, making posters appealing to young people to 'stop unnecessary violence' and writing letters to parents explaining the benefits of summer projects such as the ReachOut! Summer Programme.

More encouraging examples of the value of ReachOut!'s work with young people.

Steph Pickerill

Disruption to Summer Programme reaffirms value of ReachOut!

The ReachOut! Summer Programme is hoping to resume as normal tomorrow following an unexpected interruption yesterday. The school sadly had to close at lunchtime after warnings from police that riots were coming to Hackney.

RO is grateful to every member of staff that pulled together to ensure children got home safely and calmly. Whilst waiting to be collected, children were entertained by teachers and volunteers with impromptu games and the relaxed atmosphere was almost like a bonding session. The enthusiasm and commitment of staff and volunteers, many of whom are local students, was fantastic to see and set and excellent example to all the children present. Never before has the need for positive role models in our young people’s lives been more evident.

Recent events do nothing but reiterate the aims that drive schemes such as this one; to provide a safe environment for our young people where they can learn and have fun whilst learning ReachOut!’s core values of Fairness, Self-Control, Good Judgement and Staying Power.

The first week of the project has demonstrated that we are going far beyond just getting teenagers off the streets; their engagement with both lessons and activities is striking. My own experience as a key stage three English teacher has been exciting and fun, sometimes truly inspiring. The effort and enthusiasm of the children is impressive, their writing tasks completed with some great results. A lesson on Monday had me asking the year 7 girls what they considered important in a story; one answer sticks in my mind: 'a story without metaphors is a black and white picture. When you add metaphors you're bringing colour.'

Anecdotes like these are floating around the staffroom daily and it is these moments that represent the valuable work that RO is doing and must clearly continue.

Steph Pickerill

Successful Start to Summer!

This week ReachOut! has seen grape squashing science lessons, Dragon’s Den style persuasive writing in English and the ‘human maths game’ to practice arithmetic.

The ReachOut! Summer Programme will run at The Petchey Academy throughout August offering local pupils from Hackney fun activities, sports and booster classes. Loyal attendees returning (some for the 5th year running!) were excited to find new additions to the timetable this year: drama and arts and crafts. The project aims to raise attainment in key subjects, boost confidence amongst the pupils and perhaps most importantly, to provide them with a constructive and fun way of spending the summer holiday.

Always a favourite, the ice-skating trip was a great success. Gloria, year 4 summed up her day; ‘[it was] fun and exciting, I made a new friend and we helped each other skate because it was a bit scary.’

The relevance of this programme was confirmed this week in the press with The Evening Standard reporting that one in four London primary school leavers ‘fails to reach the expected level in English and maths’. ReachOut!’s project goes ahead with these statistics in mind, the booster classes in core subjects are aiming to combine a more relaxed learning environment with the most relevant and up-to-date lesson plans.

Today we welcomed a visit from ReachOut!’s CEO. Following a tour, Xavier was pleased to see such ‘a lot of activity, everyone busy being positive and fruitful, and best of all having fun!’

We will be blogging every Friday throughout the project but for more regular updates, news and comments follow @ReachOutLondon and look out for the #reachoutsummerproject hash-tag.

The ReachOut! Festival 2011

This summer I thought I'd try my hand at fund-raising for ReachOut!, but not being very athletic the 10k run was out of the question, and with the festival spirit of summer I attempted to organise my own in aid of ReachOut!

Originally I'd planned it to be a larger scale event with music and performances, but everyone was so busy with travelling and work – it all became very hard to organise!

Still, all was not lost as the weekend took form as a few family and friends for a relaxed camping weekend in the middle of nowhere! Money was raised through 'ticket sales' (online donations) from those who braved the countryside and also through the generous donations of those who unfortunately could not make it, but who knew the ReachOut! cause was one close to my heart.

The weather was not on our side (downpour for most of the weekend) but this didn't dampen the festival-goers' spirits. Bonfires were lit, tents were put up and wellies were worn!

Thanks to many people's incredible generosity, over £600 was raised in total, and the city-dwellers learned all about waders and how to start a good bonfire – win win!

My advice to anyone trying to organise a festival fund-raising event would be that it is very time-consuming and often stressful! But if you have the determination it is possible, and is a fantastic idea to raise money in a way that everyone can enjoy.

I wonder where the ReachOut! Festival will travel to in 2012?

By Harriet (Chipie) Melesi

(An amazing achievement Chipie! Thanks from all at ReachOut!)

ReachOut! Runners Raise over £600!

Congratulations and thank you to Mehmet Aygun, Menalik Richards, Mariya Majid, Paul Stewart and Emily Grenville-Grey who all completed the London Asics 10k run on the 10th July raising over £600 for ReachOut!

Check out the photos from the day!

The ReachOut! team get ready to run!

The boys are feeling confident!

And they're off!

A well earned rest!