Sevenoaks District Council’s ‘Making It Happen’ Awards
In March, we attended Sevenoaks District Council's ‘Making it Happen’ Community & Voluntary Awards, where we were delighted to be presented with a Certificate of Achievement in the 'Charity Project of the Year' category!
This was in recognition of all the incredible work the Outreach Team do in the Sevenoaks district; in particular, for the young people that were reached during the pandemic, when so many other services and opportunities were not available to them.
The different projects we ran included:
Think Differently Cascade project; this ten-week workshop was delivered to eight Year 11 students at West Heath School. They learnt about alcohol and substance awareness, how it affects your body and those around you, gang culture, county lines and knife crime.
Think Differently assemblies; students were further supported at West Heath school by delivery of tailor made substance misuse assemblies. The groups were small enough for the speaker to be able to use role-play and interact well with the young people and explore aspects of the talk according to their response. Assemblies were offered online to schools in Sevenoaks as an alternative option.
Community Outreach Team; the team worked right through the pandemic, reaching out to young people and delivering early intervention on the topics of alcohol, smoking, drugs, county lines, anti-social behaviour and addressing how COVID-19 has been impacting them. They also educated young people on COVID and the issues of sharing substances like cigarettes bottles and cans, or smoking Cannabis and sharing a joint that could lead to passing COVID onto each other and taking the virus home to a vulnerable person.
They also responded to anti-social behaviour hot spots, working with the local police by delivering a targeted intervention in the evenings and weekends where required.
A huge congratulations and very well done to the whole team, and thank you to Andy who attended the Awards Ceremony and collected the certificate.