In July 2008, we approached HM YOI Feltham with a view to reinstating our workshops at this location.  This decision was made due to our withdrawal from HM YOI Aylesbury where the management has resolutely refused to support any of our workshop costs since their introduction in January 2004.  We are delighted to report our pilot workshop took place at Feltham on August, 26 2008 with 14 young adult inmates, ironically, in Workshop 5 where we delivered our programme between April 1999 and July 2004.  Thanks to overwhelmingly positive feedback from both the inmates and escort staff, we have now booked 8 workshops to be presented at Feltham between September 2008 and March 2009, alternating with juveniles [15-17 year olds] and young adults [18-21 year olds], utilising the remainder of our Big Lottery Fund grant.  Should Feltham wish us to continue our workshops beyond April 2009, we have advised them that we shall require partial workshop costs, staged in two phases over a two year period.  However, with the current constraints on prison budgets, we would fully understand if this was not viable in which case we shall withdraw in March 2009.

 

On August 28, 2008, we presented our last workshop at HM YOI Norwich.  We had been singularly unsuccessful in securing partial overheads support for this location.  It was, by far, our least cost effective venue in terms of staff time, travel costs and numbers attending.  However, we were extremely sad to have left Norwich after 3 years of workshop delivery.  We wish to extend our thanks to both The Sir Halley Stewart Trust who provided the major share of our workshop costs and The Foundation Training Company Ltd, the workshop venue providers.

 

We have recently secured new grants of £60,000 over three years plus a one-off Development Grant of £15,000 from The Tudor Trust, £32,000 over two years from The City Bridge Trust, £9,000 over two years from The Ajahma Charitable Trust, £3,000, our third grant from The Hilden Charitable Fund, a second grant of £3,000 from The Goldsmiths Company and £1,000 from The Hawthorne Charitable Trust.  We continue our 'rolling' fundraising programme in order that we can take forward our schools and prison-based workshops in the next financial year and beyond.

 

In response to inmates' requests, we recently introduced a Resource Disc, a 45-minute CD which recaps on our YOI-based workshop content with encouraging confidence building messages coupled with pre- and post-release advice and guidance.  The CD also acts as a 'taster' for inmates who may not yet have attended our workshops, hopefully encouraging them to come along.

 

We are also introducing Freepost envelopes into our Information Packs, hopefully encouraging lads to write to us further with ideas and suggestions for future workshop content once they have had time to reflect on what they saw and heard during their time with us.  

 

We are delighted to report that Outside Chance achieved 'Investors in People' accreditation at our first attempt, effective from March 12, 2007.  We are extremely grateful to our pre assessment advisor, our assessor and The Urban Partnership Group for their grant of £500 towards the cost of the assessment itself.

 

Please watch out for our newsletters in January, April, July and October each year and regular website updates, all of which will keep you informed of our progress.