We are very excited to announce that we have teamed up with Wac Arts College, where we hope to deliver our behaviour change and wellbeing programme (‘Face It’) for up to 50 pupils.
To make this partnership possible, on 1st August 2017, we will be launching our fundraising campaign as part of the Big Give’s Christmas Challenge 2017. You can make a pledge to Khulisa via the Big Give website, using this link. Donations don’t need to be paid to us until January 2018, and for every £1 you pledge, we will receive up to £3 more in matched funding!
"We are delighted to be partnering with Khulisa to offer a high quality wellbeing & behaviour change programme to our pupils. At Wac Arts College, we are passionate about the power of creative arts to inspire young people back into education and know that this new project will help many of our most vulnerable students to address the barriers they face in attending school and engaging fully in their education." James Fornara, Principal at Wac Arts College
WAC Arts College
Wac Arts College is an alternative education institution with a focus on the performing arts. Based in Belsize Park, it is an inclusive school which offers lifelong support to pupils who have been excluded from mainstream education, or those who have had a challenging start in life – many are referred by social services.
Many pupils arrive with complex needs and have had very poor experiences in their previous schools. Participants selected for the Khulisa programme will be students who are at risk of offending and will all be experiencing multiple and complex disadvantages e.g. poverty, homelessness, mental health issues and children who have been/are in care.
https://vimeo.com/109681406
How can Khulisa help?
Khulisa intervenes early and helps young people make positive life choices
Our work is guided by a cognizance of the causal link between disruptive behaviour in school, school exclusion and a young person entering the criminal justice system (86% of young men in prison had been excluded from school prior to their imprisonment). For this reason, our flagship ‘Face It’ programme is school-based and educational: it is designed to prevent a young person’s exclusion from school and to promote their reintegration into mainstream education.
Khulisa works with schools to intervene at the point where a child has (or is at risk of) being excluded from school. By providing support at this high-risk transition point, we hope to help young people resolve their issues early.
Khulisa will deliver ‘Face It’ (their flagship behaviour change programme) to up to 50 vulnerable pupils at an alternative education centre, WAC Arts College in London.
The programme will help children understand and tackle the root cause of their challenging behaviour. The ‘Face It’ programme responds to the complex needs of young people: two trained therapists will deliver each intensive group workshop for 12 pupils (completed over 5 consecutive days) and also provide a series of 1:1 sessions with each pupil.
Khulisa also trains parents, carers, teachers and support workers, to help them better manage disruptive behaviour and equip them with new techniques to promote a more restorative culture in the school and in the home.
What impact will the programme have?
Over the last 10 years, Khulisa have supported over 3000 young people to live healthy, crime-free lives. With help from highly trained, professional therapists, students have proven to improve their behaviour (98%), improve their self-confidence (47%), develop stronger, social connections and increase their self-motivation (79%).
We work directly with the most disruptive pupils within their school environment helping them to understand and identify the root causes for their behaviour in classroom. We also help young people to learn new coping mechanisms to manage anger or to improve their concentration and focus during lessons. We hope that by intervening at this point, we’re able to stop young people committing more serious crime and instead, are able to fulfil their potential in a mainstream education environment.
Making it happen: The Christmas Challenge
We are fundraising for this project as part of the national Big Give Christmas Challenge 2017 – this will run from #GivingTuesday (28th November – Tuesday 5th December). To be eligible to take part, we need to raise £4,735 by 1st September. For every £1 we raise, we hope it will be matched by a further £3 from online donations and one of the Big Give’s Campaign Champions.
The Christmas Challenge is the UK’s biggest online match-funding campaign and offers supporters of participating charities the opportunity to have their donation doubled when the campaign goes live on #GivingTuesday, 28th November 2017.
To take part in the challenge, we must secure £5,000 in pledges by 1 September 2017 (The Big Give specify a minimum pledge amount of £100 per donor). Thanks to your support we have supported over 3000 young people to live healthy, crime-free lives in the past 10 years, your support for this project will ensure we support 50 pupils to complete the ‘Face It‘ programme for a 9-12 month period enabling us to embed our restorative culture in the school through our work with students and staff.
For every £1 you donate, a champion at the Big Give will match your donation, this will then be doubled by online donations.
You can make a pledge to Khulisa via the Big Give website, using this link. Alternatively, please contact Khulisa (info@khulisa.co.uk) for further details
You can also share the campaign on social media using #KhulisaWAC and the link to our website: https://khulisa.co.uk/the-christmas-challenge