Our Blog Has Moved!

Thank you for visiting the Kids First Trust blog where we have been keeping you up-to-date with all our news since 2008.

We have now built a shiny new website and have intergrated the blog into that.

Please visit http://www.kidsfirsttrust.org for up-to-date information.

Playground Partnerships News

It is with great regret that today we have announced that the Playground Partnerships Awards have been cancelled  Not being able to continue the Awards, after such a lot of interest is heartbreaking.

Here is the schools annoucement

The team are doing everything that we can in order to replace the funding that we have lost.  Please keep your fingers and toes crossed and if you can spare some dosh the link is just there to your top right hand side!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

What an incredible year.

We don’t know about you, but we have been so busy that we haven’t noticed how the time has flown and are definitely ready for a wee break!

Special thanks goes to Julien Buckley, Chris Meadows, Nicole Kavanagh, Debbie Hoods, John Finden, Chris Barton, Matt Humphreys, Jonathan Smith, Dana G, Sonia Ali, Gosbert Chagula, and Holly Jeffries who all went out of their way to help raise money through daredevil and endurance events.

Big thanks also to all our volunteers Jason Brooks, Chris Smith and Tom Amstell and Tim Wagstaff and also to Z Star, Cowen, Taxi Joe, Joe Driscoll, Danny Steele and Al Cowie for donating their time and talent in aid of the KIDS

And finally a big THANK YOU to all of you, our intrepid supporters, fans and friends. YOU helped change children’s lives this year and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

with love,

Kids First

Change children’s lives – beat the bullies

Bullying is an unprovoked, sustained campaign of aggression towards someone in order to hurt them for the sake of it (beatbullying.org). So when we at Kids First Trust heard about The Big March taking place this month of course we wanted to be part of it. Why wouldn’t we?

Currently our work is focussed on schools and school age children and of course school is one of the places where bullying is most prevalent. As a children’s charity it is our role to meet the requirements of the young people and children that we currently support – bullying is one of those needs that effects a staggering 69% of children in the UK (Bullying UK) . According to the Department of Education there are over 50,000 unauthorised absences from school every day. A 2006 report by Beat Bullying showed that a third of these children were not in school because they were terrified of the bullying they were going through. Imagine having to go to sleep at night dreading going in to school the next morning; knowing that rather than having fun with your friends and learning about new things you will be trembling and hiding all day, trying to avoid those members of your peer group that are making your life hell, just for the sake of it.

Schools should be safe places to develop and learn. They set children up for the future and with our educational schemes we strive to enhance this experience by teaching young people new skills and encouraging them to develop new ideas.  Curently, Bullying is one of the most significant reasons for children to be withdrawn from the school system altogether and educated at home.  Children should not live in fear of going to school, apart from the obvious detrimental effect that it can have on their younger years bullying is not a normal part of growing up and has the potential to ruin a young life before it has even really got started.

So like us, support The Big March on the 15th November where thousands of people will be marching across 50 websites to ask the government to help protect children from bullying, harrassment and violence. A recipient of bullying must not feel alone, show them that you care by checking out the big march on our website at www.kidsfirsttrust.org on the 15th November.

A day for inspiration

Wednesday 13th October 2010 will go down as the day that 33 men were rescued against all odds from the now infamous Chilean mine. So what of it you may be thinking, what has that got to do with a children’s charity? Actually nothing but on this very special day it feels like something has changed. There is a rewnewed sense of optimism about the place AND the sun is out. Over the past few weeks there has been nothing but doom and gloom in the news largely due to the spending cuts that are looming, and from our point of view, the uncertain impact that they might have on children.

Will it still be possible for those childen being born today to access higher education in the same way that their parents did, will there be jobs for them when they do enter the world of work and how will the loss of child benefit affect their upbringing amongst the millions of families that depend on it? With all that in mind it is even more important for charities and not-for-profit organisations to keeping supporting vulnerable groups of the community whilst continuing to forecast what issues will become relevant for future generations. It is important for us to ensure that we can be flexbile to future needs and examine how we can best provide solutions to these.

Today at Kids First we have been having a very fruitful session planning how we can continue to meet the requirements of the young people and children that we currently support. Whatever the government, environment or personal circumstance has in store for the adults of the future we know that we are here to try and fulfill their greatest needs. With that in mind we are feeling positive about the coming months and years. There is much to look forward to and as long you can continue to support us together we can carry on helping young people as they develop in to the citizens of tomorrow.

So, we can all learn from the Chilean miners. When everything seems a little bit bleak we must stay strong, stay calm and focus on the job in hand.

Help us by donating at http://www.justgiving.com/kidsfirsttrust/Donate

Power of Peer Learning

Peer learning is not a new concept. In my experience peer-led, peer-mentoring and peer-learning methods are employed all over the UK now not just in the class room but also to help us adults get along, learn and achieve.

Professor Mitra proves that children can and do teach themselves – peer learning works for them too. They just need the resources and freedom to do so. Just check out his Hole in the Wall project; so inspiring that it gave film director Danny Boyle some context for his Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire.

It may sound like common sense and you may well be reading this and wondering what on earth I am making such a fuss about but my experience is that peer learning & child-led schemes are still few & far between at anything below secondary age level in the UK.

Children are far more resourceful and able than sometimes we, as adults give them credit for. The Hole in the Wall project is in my view technology assisted peer learning. It has been proven over 10 years and the results are amazing.

Playground Partnerships is the same in principle.  We’re giving young children, sometimes for the first time, the chance to shape their surroundings by designing them, managing the budgets for them and working out how they are going to leave a lasting legacy for their peers.  They are encouraged to work together, for each others good and engage with their local communities.

They are learning together, aiming for the same common goal.

We haven’t been measuring the outcomes in the same way that Professor Mitra has with his project – but maybe it is about time we did.

Check out his TED talk here and I hope you will see what I am talking about.

The art of communication

Here at Kids First it is our job to communicate. We think we do it well sometimes and other times may be that is not so. Here is a recent example of an email conversation we had with a well known children’s author. Read it and let us know what you think (we are assuming that he was writing in character and we just love it so wanted to share!)

Email from Kids First to famous kids author:

Dear xxxx,
 
I understand that you are not a fan of schools. However, I work for a charity that makes school much more interesting for children. We are Kids First Trust and we run a couple of educational schemes that inspire and empower children to use their imagination and be their best.
 
Our flagship scheme is called Playground Partnerships and in it’s rawest sense it grants money to schools to rebuild their playgrounds. But it is more than that. We put children at the heart of what we do. We know that school can be boring at times so we make sure that it is the children that put together their application to send to us. They take on important roles such as project manager, budget controller, market researcher and site planner. Not only do the children submit their own work to us for judging we employ last year’s winning children to judge the work and decide where our money should go.
 
The reason for writing today is to find out if you or your publisher would be interesting in helping us to raise money for our work as we are big fans of your books and think that it would be fun to work together.
 
I do hope that we might be of interest and look forward to hearing from you soon.
 
Kind regards
Debbie Hoods

And now to his reply:

Dear Debbie Hoods

I don’t think “not a fan of schools” quite covers it. Obviously my website fails to spell it out in clear enough language. I need to change it to state explicitly that I wish to see all schools closed down, all teachers sacked and children set free. I do not support any initiative which props up the execrable schooling system, I do not write books for schools and do not want my books to appear in schools. I believe there are authors out there who may back your sort of charity but I am not an appropriate one to ask.

 Best wishes

 xxxxxx

Creative people eh, don’t you just love ‘em!