On your marks. Ready. Set. Go!

This summer saw the return of ReachOut’s summer projects. On the summer project we work with our partner schools to ease the transition between primary and secondary school for year 6’s going into year 7. On each project we run sports days, which are a fantastic opportunity for our mentees to practise using ReachOut’s core character values as well as a brilliant chance for our corporate partners to come and get involved!

In Manchester, we ran sports days at both MCMA and Our Lady’s summer projects working with a total of 96 young people aged 10 to 11. Our friends at PWC  and RBS dusted off their sports gear and popped down to Our Lady’s and MCMA to help lead a team of young people to victory.

Sports day began with getting everyone into teams. The children were particularly excited to have our corporate partners with them. Like one of our mentees said, “they’re grownups so they must be good at sport!”. 

Each team then split off and took part in a variety of events including obstacle courses, Basketball netting, and relay races. For many of the events there were extra points available for cheering your team on and both RBS and PWC volunteers definitely helped encourage team spirit in their groups (a few of them were cheering louder than the children!).

Once all of the scores had been totted up there was a presentation where all of the children received a medal and the winning teams at each school received trophies. There were also huge rounds of applause for our RBS and PWC volunteers. They really made the day extra special for the mentees and the young people were very grateful for their support.

A massive thank you to Jon Mepham and all of his colleagues at RBS and Gareth Crabtree

and all of his colleagues at PWC for helping out, we couldn’t have done it with you!

Mentee wins Jubilee Award for "stress" of volunteering!

My name is Rhiana Dennis-Small and I am currently a sixth form student attending Bishop Challoner. I first got into ReachOut in winter of 2013, attending the weekly mentoring sessions whilst in Y10. Some employees from Barclays came to the mentoring session to talk about work experience, and at the time I was very interested in banking.  After that session, I continued attending the weekly sessions in ReachOut and started to build my confidence. At the end of the year I then volunteered as a Junior Mentor in my school’s summer transition project, mentoring a group of 16 Year 6 pupils.

Junior Mentors on a confidence building outward bound trip. Rhiana is 3rd from left.

In Year 11, I was brave enough to run for project manager for our ReachOut group project that was a talent show and then volunteer project manager for the summer transition project at my school. I learned a lot about organisation and was able to assist others with looking after the children. I also took part in a number of other fundraising events such as bag packing to raise money for the summer project.

Junior Mentors bag packing to raise funds for the Summer Project.

As a result of all this stress, I was awarded a Jubilee Award from the Jubilee Centre for the work I have contributed towards ReachOut through my volunteering. The award ceremony was held at the House of Lords. It was genuinely a great experience and a nice day out. I had never been there before and as well as accepting the award, I was lucky enough to have a tour in the House of Lords, from which I learnt some interesting historical facts about Britain. It was an event that I will never forget and that has raised the ambitions that I already have.

Rhiana (5th from left) received the Jubilee Award for Service at the House of Lords, with James Arthur, Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues (2nd from right).

Overall, ReachOut has increased the expectations that I have for myself, improved my confidence, improved different skills I have such as communication and finally, made me come to the realisation that I love helping people and that I love working with young children.

Welcome to the ReachOut family!

We're excited to welcome several new team members into the ReachOut fold in both London and Manchester. As we prepare for the new academic year and the 66 mentoring projects starting soon they will have their work cut out!

So let's meet them!

Caroline Cheetham (pictured right)
A former primary school teacher in Sheffield, Caroline brings her experience with young people and knowledge of the KS2 curriculum to the charity as the new ReachOut Club Project Manager in London.

Jo Tripney (pictured left)
Jo is our new Volunteering Officer in Manchester. She formerly worked in the student volunteering team at Manchester University Students' Union so is prepared to manage the questions and expectations of our student volunteers.

Chris Mills (pictured right)
Chris joins the fundraising team in London, focusing on Trusts and Foundations applications. He's an Oxford grad but also plays bass in a band, raising the coolness of the team by a factor of 10!

Alice Pooley
Our new ReachOut Academy Project Officer in Manchester, Alice is well placed to manage our secondary school projects thanks to her Teach First training and project work in Hong Kong. 

Adriana Buffa (pictured left)
Our summer intern, Adriana, is from northern Italy and is busy sightseeing and exploring London whilst also taking a lead on stakeholder consultations. 

Elizabeth Thornton
Elizabeth is the newest member of our team, joining after a stint in Colombia volunteering in an orphanage. She is helping to create character development resources as well as with recruitment in London. 

Alison Braybrooks
Alison actually starts on Monday but she knows ReachOut well having been part of our Board of Advisors and volunteering in the office. She specialises in Impact Measurement and has a wealth of experience; formerly Head of Corporate Fundraising for Macmillan and has also worked in the CSR team for UBS and EDF energy. She will be heading up the fundraising team in London.

Massive welcome to them all, and also to all our new volunteer mentors who are gearing up to start projects in the coming months.

Summer's end heralded by the new school term

As the end of the summer approaches we like to take stock and look back on all the things we achieved, and there has been a lot to take stock of this year.

All through late July and August we have been busy running our Summer Projects at schools in London and Manchester. The Summer Project is all about helping incoming year 7 students with the transition into high school, as well as providing a place for young people to have fun during the school holidays.

We worked with four schools in Manchester this year: The Barlow RC High School in Didsbury, Manchester Creative Media Academy in Higher Blackley, Our Lady's RC Sports College in Higher Blackley, and St Paul's Catholic High School in Wythenshawe.


Across the projects the young people threw themselves into fun and engaging top up sessions in Maths and English, learned about industrial Manchester on trips to the Museum of Science and Industry, ran aerial gauntlets at Challenge 4 Change, went head to head with their peers in our Olympic sports day events (thanks to PWC and RBS who supported the events at Our Lady's and MCMA respectively), and tackled extra-curricular sessions in arts and crafts, dance and drama, and sport.


As much as it might be tempting to sit back an admire all the fine work we did over the summer, we don't have the time! The new academic year is just around the corner and it's time for us to get back to work planning our projects for the school year. We can't wait to do it all again. Hopefully you can come with us!

Rugby World Cup Sweepstake

The 2015 Rugby World Cup is just around the corner and this year it's in the UK! 

Why not set up a sweepstake with your friends, family and/or colleagues to really get in the spirit and raise a bit of money for your favourite charity (hopefully ReachOut) at the same time? You could even win a prize yourself!

We’ve made it as easy as possible for you and created a template sweepstake kit which you can download here and included instructions below. If you get 20 people to enter at £5 a pop, you’ll have a total prize draw of £100. Suggested prizes:

•          Winning team - £40
•          Losing team - £10
•          ReachOut - £50

If you need a bit of inspiration, just check out the pics of all of us at ReachOut getting involved with our own sweepstake earlier this week:

Sweepstake Instructions

1) Download the template sweepstake kit.

2) Cut out the countries and place them in a hat.

3) Ask each person who has entered to pull a country from the hat and write their name on the table.

4) Sit back and enjoy the rugby! 

The first match is on Friday 18th September and the final is Saturday 31st October.

If you plan to hold a sweepstake or have any questions please email Luke at luke.ounsworth@reachoutuk.org or call 0203 489 9797. Thanks!