New national charity aims to make after school activities accessible to all
18 May 2009
A new educational charity which will give young people access to opportunities and experiences aimed at transforming their futures and helping them fulfill their potential will be launched at The London Eye on Tuesday 19 May. Teachers, school children, educational reformers and businesses will come together to celebrate the launch with activities led by projects funded by the trust and a flight on the London Eye.
The Transformation Trust - which has already raised in excess of £1 million - will provide funding and support for local and national initiatives to work with students in Building Schools for the Future learning environments across England to help them develop new skills, new interests and to increase self-esteem and confidence.
The Transformation Trust aims to ensure every young person, no matter what their background or where they come from, will be able to benefit from sporting, cultural and mentoring activities available at their BSF school.
Sir David Bell, Chair of Trustees said: “In the BSF schools that have opened their gates to date, students, teachers and parents all recognise BSF as a ‘fresh start’ and are reporting a leap forward in attitude, behaviour and attainment. The Transformation Trust seeks to build on this already impressive impact by offering wider projects and schemes that will help consolidate, and even accelerate, educational transformation in these schools and communities.
“At the moment access to before and after schools can be patchy, based on what projects are available locally or the ability to pay. The Transformation Trust will create a level playing field so that it makes no difference whether you are a student in Durham, Dagenham or Devon, there will be no barriers to making the most of these opportunities.
“The Transformation Trust’s work with the 67 of BSF schools already operational is just the start of what we aim will become England’s largest and most far-reaching educational charity over time.”
The Transformation Trust is an umbrella grant-giving organisation, supporting individual third sector organisations, both nationally and locally. It will provide BSF schools with a free menu of sporting, cultural and mentoring projects to work with their students for a year.
The first four projects schools can choose from are:
Magic Breakfasts – A quarter of pupils in some of the UK’s most deprived areas arrive at school too hungry to learn. Magic Breakfast delivers free, healthy breakfast items to schools, but it also helps to build leadership and social enterprise skills within these school communities to enable them to self-fund urgently needed food provision in the future;
Shakespeare Schools Festival – works with schools to maximise their new drama facilities. Students and teachers will take part in acting and directing workshops, and will be given support as they produce an abridged version of a Shakespeare play to perform in a professional theatre.
Formula 1 in Schools – brings the thrill of F1 within the reach of young people. It enables schools to take part in an International inter-school competition that encourages young people to consider engineering as a career.
icould– helps young people find out more about the bewildering array of job opportunities by videoing people across the country and getting them to explain their route from school to where they are now. The careers web resource launched this year will help young people to raise their aspirations.
The launch event in County Hall and the London Eye will see students perform their version of Shakespeare plays, a chance to sample a ‘Magic Breakfast’, a Formula 1 in Schools racing car in action, and inflatable tee-pees where guests can watch icould’s inspirational careers videos.