Snow-Camp, the UK’s only charity using snowsports to change the lives of inner-city youth, has announced the launch of their new Mental Health Programme, Uplift.
The decision to launch the new programme comes as a result of the charity’s monitoring and evaluation data, which revealed 83% of the young people they worked with last year feel they need more mental health support.
Youth volunteers will be trialling the programme over the next few months and Snow-Camp hope to run the programme alongside the charity’s core snowsports programmes next year.
The programme will contain a number of workshops and 1-1 support sessions that will help young people suffering with low self-esteem, self-confidence and self-defeating beliefs. The workshops will teach young people invaluable coping mechanisms to help deal with toxic attachments, societal conditioning and addictions.
Lara Kinnear, Snow-Camp’s Operations Director, said:
We know that a lot of the young people we work with live in areas with high levels of deprivation and many have faced a number of significant traumas in their young lives including knife and gang crime.
We hope that alongside our snowsports programmes Uplift, our new Mental Health Programme will help do exactly that. We’re extremely grateful for the support of the George Bairstow Charitable Trust, this wouldn’t be possible without them.
The programme will be funded by the George Bairstow Charitable Trust, a Trust set up in honour of George Bairstow who was tragically killed in a car accident in 2013, whilst heading home from a shift volunteering for St John Ambulance. The Trust aims to support young people who, like George, want to volunteer in their community and have a passion for helping others in need.
Maria Bairstow, Chairman of George Bairstow Trust’s Trustees, said:
Snow-Camp’s work with young people is inspiring. Our Trust was founded to support exactly these types of programmes. George was a keen skier and was committed to helping those around him. We’re incredibly proud to
be helping Snow-Camp launch their new Mental Health Programme that has the potential to help support hundreds of young people.
To find out more about the work of Snow-Camp, visit them online.
Picture: Snow-Camp