Islington Giving is proud that its projects to invest in young people are taking part in the Word Festival, a chance to celebrate and promote reading, writing and freedom of expression, that begins today.

There are lots of ways that you can get involved; find out more here or download the brochure here

Here are just a few of Islington Giving projects taking part

B Writing

Creative writing workshops for
young women aged 13-19
Tuesdays 15, 22 and 29 May 5-7.30pm
Free Word Centre

Develop your own poetry and creative writing, working with Sarah Butler and Aoife Mannix in a series of workshops for young women aged 13-19 at the fantastic Free Word Centre in Farringdon. This is a brilliant opportunity to develop your skills or try something new with two exceptional professional writers. B Writing is part of a new initiative for young women in Islington, led by All Change and a team of young women who
are developing projects for young women by young women. For more information visit the B Project Blog.

The Saturday Night Project
Saturday 26 May 6-10pm Sobell Leisure Centre

The Saturday Night Project is a fun evening of activities, sports and coached sessions for 13-19 year-olds in
Islington, which runs on the last Saturday of every month. The May event features
special creative writing and poetry activities as part of Word2012. You can also challenge your mates
in football tournaments, basketball, badminton, netball or in the Game Zone; or show off your skills
at trampolining, ice skating, sliding, zorbing or dance. Combined with music, competitions, prizes and a
local marketplace, there’s a chance for everyone to try something new. This project is proudly funded by
Islington Giving.
Like us on Facebook – thesaturdaynightproject
Follow us on Twitter – @SatNightProject

Wordsearch
Saturday 26 May 6.30pm Central Library
Islington Community Theatre’s Speakeasy project, supported by Islington Giving, is a collective
of extraordinary young playwrights from across the borough.For one night only, they’re taking over Central Library in Islington and inviting you to come and play a
unique game of hide and seek.Collect your Word Search sheet at the door and wander off in search of new plays, each being performed ‘script-in-hand’ in nooks and crannies all over the library. When you’ve found them all, answer the questions on your sheet and solve the clues to be in with a chance of winning the fi rst ever Wordsearch prize. See here for more information.

Inspired by the Royal Court’s 100 word plays Islington Community Theatre are also publishing a 100 word play every day throughout the festival, by writers from our Speakeasy project. You can check them out here

The Word2012 Read-in
Saturday 12 May 2012 Lunchtime
If you’re passing Highbury Fields on Saturday 12 May, you might just notice something a little
bit different…
A multitude of young people emerging from Central Library. Heads held high. Hands by their sides. A
single book tucked safely under their right arm. No-one knows how they all got there. Or who they are.
Or why they’ve come. But they’re here, determined to take their place in the sunshine (or rain) and do just
one thing. READ! A curious flashmob event to celebrate the start of the
Word2012 Festival, co-produced by the All Change B Project for young women and Islington Community
Theatre and supported by Oberon books.
Follow it on @ictheatre #read-in

Wednesday 25th April saw a busy Frederick’s restaurant in Camden Passage, host a breakfast for women in Islington to show their support for Islington Giving.

Hosted by Lynne Berry OBE, the event was a chance to hear the stories of the local women who support the campaign and some of the women who have benefited from the projects that Islington Giving has been able to support thanks to the generosity of local residents and businesses.

Val Henney, of doorknocking charity Help on Your Doorstep and the Canonbury Good Neighbours Scheme spoke of her experience living on the New River Green Estate and working for the charity, where the gap between the two Islingtons was extremely apparent.

Help on Your Doorstep, funded by Islington Giving knock on doors and supports residents to get the practical help that they need. This approach at the doorstep exposes the other side of Islington, one which is often invisible. As Val said, you can paint the outside of a building but inside there are still people living in poverty.

The event heard from women from all walks of life, from local parents who have benefited from our parent mentoring project through The Parent House through to representatives of local businesses talking about their commitment to Islington and the volunteering they are able to support. One parent, Ewa described her journey being mentored on the programme, “there used to be doors closed in front of me, now they are open.”

Farreena Brown, 14, from the Islington Dance Academy, spoke about the importance of The Saturday Night Project, part of Islington Giving’s programme to invest in young people by opening up activities at the evening and weekends when much else is closed or overly expensive.

Naomi Schillinger of Blackstock Triangle Gardeners spoke how philanthropy and community action make a real difference to local communities, because when you start giving, people start giving back. A recurring theme of the event, giving, this was picked up by local author Betsy Tobin and the Chair of Cripplegate Foundation Anne-Marie Ellis, who explained how small amounts of money and time can make such a huge difference to the lives of local people.

You can see more reaction from the event here

The Saturday Night Project is this weekend, find out more here

The Parent House are recruiting parents for their mentoring project (closing date 30th April 2012)

Donate online or read our fundraising pack to see how you can help

Islington Giving is proud to fund Age UK Islington’s Giving Time, Giving Help project to get older people in Islington involved in their local community, either as volunteers or getting out and about at a whole range of activities.

Supported by City Bridge Trust, the project works with local community groups and residents to confront isolation in Islington.

Most recently they teamed up with Arsenal to host a Wii Sports tournament at the Emirates. Volunteers from Arsenal’s Youth Programme took part with a group of men from Age UK Islington.

The project aims to take activities for older people out into the community to combat isolation, from social clubs in pubs to Nordic Walking in local parks and is always looking for volunteers. Find out more about volunteering here

Find out more about Age UK’s Giving Time, Giving Help project here

CORE launch at Macquarie Group Headquarters

Using the skills and resources of the businesses that Islington is home to is key to Islington Giving. Skilled volunteering allows community groups to benefit from expertise that would otherwise be out of their reach and gives businesses and their staff an effective way to get involved in their local community.

This is why Islington Giving is proud to work in partnership with Macquarie Group on its COmmunity Resourcing (CoRe) programme. Running since 2009, over 50 Macquarie Group staff have worked with 16 Islington groups, to build capacity across the sector through a 6 month programme of high level and intensive volunteering.
This year 4 organisations have been selected to take part in the programme, Help on Your Doorstep, The Saturday Night Project, All Change Arts and Cubitt Education. At a matching event hosted at Macquarie’s Islington Headquarters, they were paired with their teams of staff volunteers, setting out where they needed support and an action plan for the 6 months until the project ends in September.

Previous years have seen support given in business planning, building consortia, marketing advice and mentoring. We will be following the progress of all the projects as they get going to see the progress that they make

Find out more about last year’s projects here in improving their organisations to enable them to make an even bigger impact in Islington.

Read our recent blog posts about The Saturday Night Project and All Change Arts

We have been following the progress of City and Islington College students taking part in our mentoring scheme with staff from BT.

Tuesday saw the final presentations from the teams at BT’s headquarters in St. Paul’s.

The students have been mentored by senior executives at BT and have been split into teams with each team being given £500. Teams have been tasked with increasing their money by as much as possible, and at the end of the project will donate all proceeds to charity.

The judging panel at the review consisted of top executives at BT, Openworld and City and Islington. Students were quizzed on the how their projects had progressed from their initial business proposals in January, the profit they have made so far, and how much they expect to make by the end of the project.

Team Steve Jobs, raised just over £150 through a series of games tournaments in which over 70 students participated. They were grilled by the panel on the pricing of entry to their tournaments, the amount of money spent on prizes, and widening participation of their events to females.

The project finished at ceremony at The BT Centre in St Paul’s where all teams had their projects reviewed once again by the executives and the winning team was announced.

Aiming to promote academic achievement, money management and personal and career development, the project was an excellent example of how volunteers from the business world can support young people, and how giving time can make a real difference to local communities.

The mentoring scheme was also beneficial for the mentors. Jane from BT, who organised the project,  spoke of how amazing it had been to, “see the confidence of our City and Islington teams developing.” Tamsin, course tutor from City and Islington spoke of how “support from BT  has allowed students to get real world experience of business.”

You can find out more about how to get involved in volunteering in Islington here

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures’ and we can’t think of a better project to showcase that than The B Project.

Run by All Change Arts, The B Project has been set up to explore what young women aged 13-19 want, to introduce them to services that are available to them, to find out what’s missing and to influence what is provided for them locally. A team of young women aged 15-21,are leading a this new project for young women in Islington.

All Change will be working with young women and a team of amazing artists and youth workers, to explore ideas and to develop new projects and events.

v Be involved in new activities and changing your local young people’s services for the better

v Be challenged by photography, street dance, music, live/graffiti art and other creative activities

v Be part of flash mobs, processions, pop–up shops and publicity stunts

v Be pampered with nail art in our ‘B’ mobile

v Become involved in organising your own event, showcasing the skills, performances and art created in our workshops throughout the borough

v Become more confident in your skills

Meet Lucy and Desara, 2 of the B Project peer leaders:

‘’Hi my name is Lucy Elderton and I am currently at school undertaking my GCSE’s, I am very excited to work o

a social worker and work with young people. I believe the B Project will provide me with a lot of skills to help me progress and I am very happy to be a part of it. One of my hobbies is photography and I have Bronze Arts Award for it.’’

n the B Project, a) because it is my first real job and b) because it is a starting point to my career path as I want to be

“Hey, my name is Desara Bosnja, in the past couple of years I’ve been involved in anything and everything that is performing arts. I am a young actress and that’s where my love for performing arts comes from. I love working with young people and collaborating with them and making changes in the community through the medium of performing arts and/or just Arts in general. I am very excited to be part of the B Project because it collates my two passions, Performing Arts and Making Change. I believe that there is no better fulfilment then when you know you’ve made a positive impact on something or someone.”

Find out more about The B Project

Find out more about All Change Arts

Today is International Women’s Day and we thought this would be a great time to tell you about some of the work that we do to support some of the most vulnerable and isolated women in Islington, as well as our work to support parents.

Our project with The Parent House, where parents are trained to mentor other parents is continuing into its second year. The project allows parents to train as mentors so that they can get support for themselves and help out other local parents.

Parents who took part last year told us, “Now I am not afraid to ask for help. There is always help available so you don’t have to feel alone or struggle alone.” Another added, “I look at life from a different viewpoint. Now I’ve got more patience and see other people’s potential.”

The Maya Centre and Women’s Therapy Centre are providing free counselling for some of the poorest and most vulnerable women in Islington.

All the women that the Maya Centre work with have an income of under £10,000 if they are on their own or £15,000 with children and live or work in Islington.

One woman who benefitted from the support said, “My counsellor listened to me and gave me some good, wise advice, she made me realise I’m as good as the next person, which I’d never thought before.”

Another said, “I faced my ghosts and have a better understanding of myself and why people treated me the way they did.”

The Women’s Therapy Centre provide counselling by women for women in particular to those who wouldn’t normally have access to counselling.

“I used to feel like a victim all the time …but normally I don’t anymore and I think that’s the major change. When you realise actually you are not a victim, okay, something happened to you, it was very unpleasant and affected me a lot, actually it affected the way I am anyway, it made me into what I am, but I can nevertheless decide what I want. So I feel much more in control of my life.”

These projects allow us to provide the specialist support needed to secure a better future for Islington women and their families.

Find out more about:

The Parent House

The Women’s Therapy Centre

The Maya Centre

The Guardian recently featured Islington Giving‘s ‘Good Neighbours’ project in Canonbury as part of its series on the work of the Islington Fairness Commission.

We are delighted to fund this project, which helps local people get involved in volunteering in their local area. The project launched in January 2012 and stay tuned for updates on how it is going.

You can read the full article here

An exciting programme of Friday night events, aimed at 13 – 19 year olds,  is currently being run at Platform. Each ‘Inspire’ event is programmed, co-ordinated and managed on the night by a small team of aspiring young ‘event managers’ supported by Changemakers. A successful ‘Night of the Arts 2′ on 17 February, where 120 young people showed their talents in dancing, acting and singing, is followed by Base Beats-Dance on 24 February, ‘Ignite Live’ spoken word & performance poetry on 2 March and  ‘Platform Party’ on 9 March (See Platform website for further details)

Opening poem by Idris, our talented host;

I’ve seen the cast rehearsing for days & its inspiring, we should clap for’em.

As long as they remember their roots and know the true homage paid is to platform.

A platform is a horizontal surface raised above the level of the adjacent area.

This is another chance, to show the world teens are superior.

Platform gives us the opportunity to be higher than we were before.

Tonight you’ll see drama, singing dancing & more.

The first night of the arts, we hit a nerve when we challenged the stereotype of teens.

We succeeded now we’ve switched it up, with the olympic theme.