President Obama reaches out to ReachOut

It’s been an exciting week! If you’ve been following our social media channels over the last few days you'll know that ReachOut has been involved in something truly historic.

On Saturday, five ReachOut mentees were invited to attend a Town Hall with the President of the USA, Barack Obama!

Owura Osei-Asibeh, Gavin Alexander, Sabrina Choudhury, Tionne Tulloch-May, and Izzy Cofie (left to right in photo) were on the edge of their seats as Obama discussed key major issues including foreign affairs, racism and gender rights.

The main focus of the speech however, was that young people had to work hard and stay optimistic about solving world issues. The President asked the audience of young adults to “reject pessimism and cynicism” and “take a longer, more optimistic view of history”.

As proponents of good character, we couldn’t agree more. If you mix a positive attitude with staying power and community spirit, then there are no problems too big to tackle.

The whole event was a great experience for our mentees, who were hugely honoured to have been invited to take part:

• “Barack Obama made me understand that you have to do the right thing, not necessarily do things ‘right.’” - Gavin

• “[I'm going to] be more open to change. Accept others' opinions and be more understanding.” - Sabrina

• “As well as continuing to work with kids as a tutor, I am going to seek more volunteering opportunities to help wherever I can.” - Tionne

We are proud and inspired that our young people are choosing to create positive change on the world and people around them. This is what ReachOut is all about.

London's Volunteer Thank You Event

The annual ReachOut Thank You Event gives us the opportunity to show our appreciation to all of our volunteers for the time, effort and commitment that they put into working with our young people. We know that mentoring with ReachOut isn’t easy and it’s important to us that we have a formal opportunity to say thank you for the energy, determination and resilience we see from our mentors every year!

Thursday 17^th March 2016 saw what was described by ReachOut’s CEO, Peter Blackwell, as London’s best Thank You Event yet’! There was a great turn out on the night with over 120 mentors, mentees and ReachOut supporters  coming together to celebrate our fantastic volunteers efforts over the last 7 months and beyond.

Peter Blackwell kicked off the event with a speech outlining some of ReachOut accomplishments this year. Becoming a Hackney Half Marathon official partner, hosting a fantastic event at Bloomberg with US Ambassador to the UK Matthew Barzun and having Ali Aden, ReachOut’s youth ambassador, speak at the Character Symposium alongside Nicky Morgan to mention a few.

Next up we heard from two ReachOut mentees currently taking part in our new post 16 programme, Community Leaders. Paul Ngyuen and Sabrina Choudury spoke with great confidence and modesty about their achievements and learnings over the 3 years they have been involved at ReachOut. A tough act to follow!  

We presented many hotly contested awards during the evening including Outstanding Project and Volunteer of the Year for all 3 of our programmes. It was also the second year that we awarded the Inspirational Student award in memory of Kieran Dhaliwal a ReachOut mentor who sadly passed away in October 2014.

The evening was all about our volunteers, so it was fitting that two longstanding ACE mentors and crowd favourites, Sally Shervington and Steve Maplesden shared their experiences of volunteering and the amazing changes they had seen in the young people throughout their time at ReachOut.

It was great to see so many of you at the event and I think all would agree there was a real buzz in the air and a realisation that mentoring with ReachOut makes you part of a family with a shared aim to help our young people be the best they can be. We’re hoping to schedule in lots more social events over the coming 12 months so keep an eye out and hope to see you soon!

A special thank you to Macquarie for hosting the event and to Suhita Kabir (Year 12 mentee) for her great photography skills!