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What's Going On?To sign up for regular updates via our quarterly newsletter and/or prayer diary please click here. You can view or download the latest issues here: Newsletter, Summer 10; Prayer Diary, Jul-Sep 10. For previous issues please click here.
Please scroll down for selected recent stories:(just a selection; there are many more stories in the quarterly newsletters)
Auction raises nearly £14k for charityAn auction of promises in aid of Romsey Mill has raised almost £14,000.
The event, part of the charity’s 30th birthday celebrations, took place on Friday 9 July in the Old Library at Emmanuel College. Lady Caro Wilson, a patron of Romsey Mill, and her husband, Lord Richard Wilson, Master of Emmanuel, kindly hosted the event, which saw over eighty guests enjoying food and entertainment, and bidding furiously for forty lots, which quickly fell under the gavel.
The highest bidding went on a pair of Grandstand seats at Lord’s cricket ground that sold for £1100, and lots also included such diverse treats as the services of a Romsey Mill gardening team, B&B accommodation in Sydney, Australia, a rooftop tour of King’s College and many other attractive offers, gifted by numerous generous donors.
Commenting on the evening, Neil Perry, chief executive officer of Romsey Mill, said: “We are thrilled to have raised this great amount for our charity, and are really grateful to so many people for making the event such a success.”
Auction guests gained insight into the work of Romsey Mill, hearing from some of the young people who take part in its services and watching a recently produced film about the charity.
Vera Schuster-Beesley, a trustee at Romsey Mill and one of the organisers of the event, said: “It was a really worthwhile evening, made possible by the support of those who gave and bought so generously, and the generosity of Emmanuel College.”
New mentoring scheme for Transitions ProgrammeThe exciting new development within the Transitions Programme is our new mentoring scheme. Mentoring offers children in years 5 and 6 of primary school an adult support to enable them to continue well in school. Through emotional support, literacy work and life skills guidance the mentoring scheme hopes to build self esteem, promote good school attendance and support children with any needs that they have.One-to-one work with children and young people is a significant part of Romsey Mill’s youth work. This new development will enable this to continue in a new way with younger children. In the Transitions team we are excited to have Gavin Howard coordinating five new volunteers supporting children in the local primary schools. Having all taken part in a newly developed mentoring training, our new volunteers are now going into school for up to an hour each week to meet with their mentee.Gavin writes: "We have seen how a child’s whole outlook can be changed by a special relationship between mentor and mentee. For example, we were contacted by a local primary school about Andrew (name changed), a boy whose behaviour left him at risk of being excluded. His behaviour was very erratic and his performance in the classroom was certainly below standard. A mentor has been going into the school for one hour a week since Easter 2009 and Andrew has thrived from this extra attention. The worker sits for a while with Andrew while he completes a written task in class and then spends the majority of the time outside with Andrew and his friends playing football. Andrew’s behaviour is vastly improved and the school have commented that they are really happy to see the change in Andrew. They now feel confident that, having been helped through a tricky time in his young life, he will go on to do well and make a good transfer to secondary school. As this work develops with the children prior to reaching the transition age we hope that a greater number of children will reach the transfer with confidence, support and new skills to equip them for change. If you feel that you too could have a significant impact on a child’s life then Romsey Mill’s mentoring is the scheme for you. The pilot programme is running in primary schools this year and you could join these brave pioneers if you wish. Please contact Gavin Howard on 07768 302301 or email gavin(dot)howard@romseymill(dot)org or click here to contact us.
Open day to kick off 30th birthday celebrations We are hosting an open day on Saturday 27 March as part of our 30th birthday celebrations. The informal drop-in event will take place between 2 and 4.30pm at the Romsey Mill Centre on the corner of Mill Road and Hemingford Road, Cambridge. The free event will feature displays about the various programmes and the Mill’s history, music and dance performances from young people, and offer refreshments. It will also provide an opportunity to meet some of Romsey Mill’s staff team, volunteers and trustees. The motivation behind establishing a youth and community centre, as a local church magazine described it back in 1976, was to reach those who are hard-to-reach or ‘unattached’ and demonstrate a ‘practical concern for young people’. This is still an enduring motivation for Romsey Mill’s work today. We would encourage anyone who has always wondered what goes on in ‘that building’ on the corner of Mill Road to come along and see what we do and to find out why we are so passionate about creating opportunities with young people and families to bring positive transformation and lasting difference to their lives. Tyre roadshow raises funds for Romsey MillNational Tyres & Autocare and Bridgestone raised nearly £120 for Romsey Mill at a tyre safety roadshow at Sainsbury’s on Coldham’s Lane, Cambridge. Local shoppers were able to get their photo taken next to Bridgestone’s stunning Formula One car and test their driving skills in a F1 simulator – both in exchange for a donation to Romsey Mill.
Tim Lee, national accounts executive at Bridgestone explained: “We heard about Romsey Mill through it having been selected by Sainsbury’s Coldham’s Lane as its local charity of the year. We have since had the opportunity to see and hear about the incredible work that the charity does with young people and families and are thrilled to be able to support their pioneering programmes.” Autism-specific youth work expands thanks to YSDF fundingThanks to funding from the Youth Sector Development Fund (YSDF), we have expanded our autism-specific youth work with young people aged 9 to 18. This funding has enabled Ruth Watts, co-ordinator of our Aspire programme for children with Asperger Syndrome or other high-functioning Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASCs), to move from half to full-time. This has allowed Ruth to begin forging closer links with Cambridgeshire schools and colleges, to help them to develop their own clubs and activities, particularly during lunchtimes.
“Break and lunchtimes can prove challenging for young people with ASCs as they often find socialising so confusing and tiring,” says Ruth. “Many young people with ASCs are also bullied, and so it is a challenge for schools to provide a suitable space for these young people where they can feel safe and relax away from these pressures. “I have really enjoyed working with schools during the autumn term to help them start to meet this challenge,” added Ruth. “ It also allows me to develop relationships with new young people, which provides the potential to develop new groups and interest-based projects in the future.” The Youth Sector Development Fund (YSDF) is part of Aiming High: a ten year Government strategy for positive activities for young people. Transitions programme expands to Parkside Federation…and beyondWe have a new member of our Transitions team thanks to funding from the Parkside Federation. Naomi Message joined Romsey Mill in the autumn as our Transitions Development Worker for South Cambridge to work within Parkside and Coleridge and their feeder primary schools. We are really excited about this partnership with the Parkside Federation and look forward to developing links with the different schools so that the needs of more young people in the south of the city can be met. We are very grateful to the Parkside Federation for their financial support.
“This term, I have been busy building contacts within Parkside, Coleridge and its feeder schools and have started visiting many of the primary schools on a weekly basis,” says Naomi. “I have really enjoyed getting to know the children and look forward to helping them to have the best possible start to their secondary school careers.” Romsey Mill’s Transitions team and its Ready to Go resources help young people to make a straightforward and smooth transition from primary to secondary school. Participation - a key concept in our workParticipation is a key concept in our work. It means working alongside young people, seeing life from where they stand, recognising their strengths and facilitating real involvement in decisions that affect them. We see young people in terms of what they can do - as full persons rather than persons in the making. At worst, a non-participatory approach has young people as token members of panels where their voices carry no weight. At best, young people and adults share in decision-making, with young people initiating projects and accessing adult support and expertise to achieve their goals. In between, there are approaches that support young people appropriately, but always seeing young people as problem-solvers, not problems. Jackson Nazombe, Participation Officer for South Cambridgeshire and based at Romsey Mill, says, ‘I believe that youth participation is when young people are deciding what to discuss, discussing it, and deciding what can be done to make things happen.’ Jackson argues that this approach benefits both individuals and organisations. Organisations get a stronger identity and sense of community purpose. Young people develop confidence, resilience and a connection with the community to which they are now contributing as full members. Romsey Mill has seen this approach succeed. For example, Romsey Terriers football team grew from outreach in Romsey and was begun with support from youth workers. Now it’s run by some of the original members who have organised coaching and pitch hire along with membership of a competitive league. We know that we have some way to go, and continue to explore routes to increase participation and to empower the young people with whom we work by developing skills and inspire a sense of responsibility. Ready to Go resource now available!Ready to Go is an easy-to-use, off-the-shelf resource developed by our highly-regarded Transitions Programme team to prepare year 6 children for the transition from primary to secondary school.  For more information click here.
Sainsbury's Charity of the Year!We are delighted to have been chosen as Sainsbury’s Local Charity of the Year.
To celebrate its 140th birthday, Sainsbury’s has launched an initiative for a selected local charity to benefit from a year long link with their local Sainsbury’s supermarket. With the nominations in and counted, Romsey Mill proudly took the stage as Sainsbury’s Local Charity of the Year.
Winning this accolade will enable Romsey Mill to work in partnership with Sainsbury’s staff from the Coldham’s Lane store in Cambridge, from now until May 2010, to organise a number of fundraising events including charity collections, and volunteering for the charity.  We already have many fun and exciting events planned to work towards our target of £15,000.
Neil Perry (Romsey Mill Chief Executive) says: “It’s a great opportunity to work together to raise awareness, funds, and other kinds of support that make such a positive difference for the children, young people and families with whom we work.” Bev Tumber (PR Ambassador, Sainsbury’s Coldham’s Lane) says: “It’s great to be supporting Romsey Mill as our Local Charity for the Year. We are looking forward to various fundraising and volunteering initiatives for the charity. So many of our colleagues and their families have benefited from the work that Romsey Mill does. We are all very excited and want to raise as much as we can for the charity.” We would like to invite anyone interested in volunteering to support our future fundraising events at Sainsbury’s (even for just an hour) to contact Sam Hill at: sam.hill@romseymill.org or on 01223 566492. Wylies' Watershed Way: the finale
The most direct route by road is 874 miles, but avoiding waterways has led to Malcolm travelling more like 1800 miles, covering a section each summer over fourteen years. This year he walked through Cornwall, from near Bude to Land's End via Bodmin Moor, "about 125 miles including the wiggles", says Malcolm. Malcolm, one of our trustees, had already raised over £6,000 for Romsey Mill's youth expeditions from the previous legs of his journey. This year sponsors have been particularly generous: he is close to his target of £3,000! If you would like to help Malcolm reach his target, you can still sponsor him by clicking here for a link to his JustGiving page. Malcolm explains, "This started out as a rather mad idea in 1995, when it occurred to me that it could be done and probably hadn't been done before. The first section, starting at John o'Groats in 1996, demonstrated that it was probably feasible, although there was a good deal of bog-hopping and a rather dangerous climb involved. "When I got back from that first week and started talking about it, lots of people suggested that I should use it to raise sponsorship for a good cause. So I decided that as well as enjoying the 14-year adventure, I'd raise money for Romsey Mill. I've been associated with the Mill on and off since it was set up, and the Mill team was really helpful to my daughter Emma when she needed help as a troubled teenager. "I've thoroughly enjoyed walking the length of this wonderful country of ours, and there have been too many highs and lows (literally and emotionally) to mention. Naturally, the welcome party at Land's End on 20th June was fantastic.
"My favourite quote about the venture came in 2000 from the landlady of Mosspaul Inn, near the Scottish border. Having heard my story, I overheard her saying to another guest: "You see that man over there - he's walking from John o'Groats to Land's End without passing water"." His adventurous spirit unquenched, Malcolm now plans to climb all 284 of the Munros - Scotland's highest mountains. He has already scaled 109 of them - 50 as part of the Watershed Way - and aims to climb the final one on his 70th birthday! When we told Malcolm he's an inspiration, he replied "or just mad"! Maybe, but we're sticking with inspirational. Tall ships expedition
It was a step into the unkown for all of the young men, entered into with some trepidation. However, the trip was a great success. The group all learnt a great deal about themselves, and developed many skills, including getting to grips with ropes, sails and the helm. They were determined to succeed and left the 72' yacht with a great sense of team spirit and personal achievement. One young man was determined to learn as many knots as he could, and then teach others. Another was keen to learn how to trim the sails and give the orders to those pulling the ropes and using the winches. Many of the tasks on the boat require everyone to work together and pull their weight, so it was excellent for the development of teamwork. Romsey Mill's Children & Youth Work Programme Manager, James Bennett, said, "It was great to see the lads rise to the challenge. We all learnt a huge amount about sailing, and about what we could achieve together."  |
Pioneer Malcolm Wylie has just completed the final 125 miles of his epic sponsored back-packing walk from John o'Groats to Land's End, along the British watershed. That means he has walked the length of Britain without crossing any running water - the first time anyone has achieved this, as far as we know.
In April, ten intrepid young men set off from Romsey Mill for a five-day sailing trip around the Isle of Wight, supported by The Rank Foundation. Part of a group we run at Manor Community College, the young men were able to develop team and leadership skills, confidence and a fresh perspective from the top of the rigging.