At the end of last year we took a moment to reflect and look ahead to 2024 with a fresh pair of eyes and excitement. Over 2023 we have seen a huge amount of wonderful activity, support and impact from our programmes, outdoor centre and youth centre.
Thank you for all your support this year!
2023 in Numbers…
12,045 visitors to The Caldecotte Xperience
11,598 visits to The Junction by young people
20 Breakout Programmes undertaken in Milton Keynes and Bucks schools
13 The Inspiration Programmes
We worked with 221 young people undertaking their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
Over 1800 young students took part in the National Citizen Service programme with us (NCS)
Over 92 young people have been mentored in over 811 sessions, plus individual counselling sessions have taken place at The Junction
50 membership organisations.
With Thanks to all of our Supporters!
Firstly, a huge thanks to all of the great companies and people we work with; be that funding a programme, hosting a school trip venue, donating a grant, taking part in an event or volunteering their time or salary.
We enjoyed visits from local community leaders to our Caldecotte Xperience Centre including MPs Ian Stewart and Ben Everitt and Milton Keynes Cabinet member, Zoe Nolan (captured enthusiastically in the tunnel above).
Suzanne Moss from Ringway and her team erected the marquee for our many NCS students who joined us over the summer (seen below), as well as provided sponsorship for our Big Challenge Lunch event in 2024.
Tom Wraight, Regional Director for Carey’s, and team (pictured below) built a more accessible pathway to the yurts at The Caldecotte Xperience ahead of providing fundraising support in 2024.
The team from NHBC not only volunteered by painting the watersports centre (pictured with CEO, Jenifer Cameron below) and putting up bell tents; we also celebrate a fantastic year’s funding and fundraising partnership with them.
Paradigm Housing Group funding made it possible for us to activate several new Breakout programmes in Milton Keynes, stamping out knife and gang crime in the region, whilst Stoke Park have continued their generous support.
East West Railway (EWR) generously provided the funding for an Inspiration Programme (TIP) and came along to share information about their work with young people and award TIP completion certificates. Other generous Inspiration Programme funders for this new school year include John Lewis Foundation, NHBC, centre:mk and MyMiltonKeynes.
Poppy from Rectory Homes / Rectory Foundation who awarded a grant to our youth space, The Junction, visited the centre to meet the manager and see the place in action. We also enjoyed support from Thrive Homes for The Junction, funding our crisis support sessions. * In an exciting twist on the usual services we offer at The Caldecotte Xperience, we got to host Bucks Fire Service who conducted a training exercise in the tunnels.
We say a huge thank you to Taylor Wimpey who hosted a charity event with funds donated to us as their chosen charity for the 2023 event. As well as their annual strategic partnership funding, we now have a ‘Tap To Donate’ terminal in centre:mk thanks to MyMiltonKeynes encouraging donations for our Breakout (our anti-knife, crime and drug intervention) programme.
As well as making a financial donation, volunteers from The Asset Management Team of Mazars kindly volunteered their time to paint the inside of the George Amey building, residential bedrooms, and canteen at The Caldecotte Xperience.
Teams from Alexander and Co., Dentons and NHBC ran for us in the MK Marathon event. Chair, David Teasdale and wife Cathy, ran the half and are seen smiling post-event below and Kathryn Hobbs, PA to President, Countess Howe ran the full.
We have been lucky enough to receive local donations from a range of Tesco, Asda and John Lewis stores to fund various projects including mentoring and The Junction.
o3e kindly donated skateboards to us to share across The Caldecotte Xperience and The Junction that were being built by one of the companies they work with.
We continue to be hugely grateful to all our charitable trusts and foundations who have invested in our work with young people throughout the year; *The Rothschild Foundation *St James’s Place Charitable Foundation *Garfield Weston Foundation *Charles Hayward Foundation *Heart of Bucks Community Foundation *MK Community Foundation *National Lottery Community Fund.
We also thank those who have committed and pledged to support our Caldecotte capital appeal project including; *The Bernard Sunley Foundation *Clothworkers Foundation *Swire Charitable Trust *John Armitage Charitable Trust *Roger and Jean Jefcoate Charitable Trust *Anson Charitable Trust *National Philanthropy UK.
Welcoming New Trustees
We welcome 5 new Trustees to the board – David Apperly, Alastair Douglas, Simon Sharkey-Woods, Louise Eldred and Andrew Peters. David wasted no time getting stuck in (pictured above with Dhiren Pankhania of Tillet Steel), reviewing plans for our appeal to raise £1.4m to re-do our outdoor education centre.
Keep your eyes peeled for some exciting development on this later this year. The work of our wonderful trustees can sometimes be overlooked as they work tirelessly behind the scenes. We celebrated them online in Trustees Week.
Celebrating our Young People
Over the year, we have witnessed countless trips and adventures from those school students who have gone through a programme, to the young people attending a HAF session or the thrill of attending an Adventure Club, to those young individuals going through a counselling or mentoring programme.
Here are some highlights;
Young adventurers from The Walton High School explored the Peak District on their Silver and Gold The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition (pictured above top left) developing some key life skills of resilience and confidence.
Several groups of students on The Inspiration Programme were inspired after visits to the Greatmoor Energy from Waste.
The Stony Dean School, Amersham took part in a fun craft activity to celebrate the coronation (pictured above, bottom right with lead, Tracy Palmer).
We hosted international students from Poland who enjoyed outdoor activities at Caldecotte and local sightseeing (pictured above, bottom left).
Students from The Aylesbury Vale Academy were visited by special guest, criminal barrister and A4Y ambassador, Irfan Arif, to celebrate and present TIP certificates.
Pupils from New Covenant Church, Purfleet, one of the many schools we hosted over the summer, visited Caldecotte and had an amazing time!
We hosted nearly 2000 students on our seasonal NCS programmes who discovered cooking, staying away, team work and general fun with other 16-17 year olds.
Family angels provided one of our mentor students a therapy rabbit to help her deal with her emotions and make positive progress (pictured top right).
Employee of the Month
We’d like to congratulate, yet bid a sad workmate farewell to our wonderful Accounts Officer, Eunice Cubbage.
Eunice won our November Employee of The Month Award. She was nominated for her “professional nature of work; her speed in providing help for any accounting enquiry; her professional and helpful nature and great sense of humour”, Eunice will be missed!
Congratulations Eunice and we wish you every success for the future!
So what does 2024 have in store for us and our community?
We held our celebration event for young people at The Big Challenge Lunch this week. Teams from MK and Bucks schools went head-to-head to win The Ultimate Challenge Cup for them and their council and £1000 for their school. We are excited to annouce Sir Thomas Fremantle school took the top spot, winning it for Bucks council.
In other news, we look ahead as a new Charity of the Year for SquareTrade, where Alastair Douglas, A4Y Trustee is Senior Vice-President and CFO. Our relationships with our corporate and community partners will and developing new connections. Our appeal to re-develop The Caldecotte Centre will go into overdrive with a new campaign heading your way! We will be hosting our Caldecotte Xtreme event for teams to raise money for the appeal, all whilst keeping active, having fun and taking on a little, healthy competition!
