Our Fantastic Partnership with CIBC

Written by Angel Lindberg Vazquez on September 26th, 2022
SkyWay's Communications Coordinator/Youth Worker

This year we were selected as one of CIBC’s charity partners, alongside two amazing charities, School Home Support and Lennox Children’s Cancer Fund. We know that by working in partnership with other organisations we can maximise our impact on the children and families we support, learning from one another and sharing our skills, knowledge and experiences. 

This partnership would not be possible without the incredible support of CIBC, who have brought our charities together and whose invaluable support enables us to reach more children and families.

At School-Home SupporT

Our practitioners work in school settings to support children to be in school, ready to learn. We work with the whole family to tackle barriers to education, such as poverty, domestic violence and mental ill health, to ensure children are accessing the education they deserve. The need for our services has never been greater. Pre-pandemic, 1 in 9 children were missing more than 10% of their schooling each year and were classed as persistently absent. In the last academic year we have worked with 667 young people who were persistently absent, an increase of 94% on the year before. More children are missing weeks, months and even years of their education, severely affecting their future life chances.

Over the last academic year we have also seen an 88% increase in our interactions with children and families, from 66,404 in 2020-2021 to 125,012 in 2021-2022. These staggering figures show that the pandemic and cost of living crisis have heightened the challenges facing the children and families we are working to support, and highlight the essential need, now more than ever, for collaboration and community.

At SkyWaY

Formed in 2001 as a reaction to the lack of youth services that were available at the time in South Hackney, SkyWay gives young people in some of London’s most disadvantaged communities the skills and confidence to take ownership of their future while working with and strengthening the communities they are part of. They work with approximately 1,500 people per year, with about 500 being regular participants in their activities.

SkyWay specialises in training and supporting people to develop their responses to community problems. The aim is to enable people to collectively address the challenges they face in life, which is more sustainable than trying to “solve” problems for them.

At Lennox Children’s Cancer Fund

They support families through childhood cancer with financial, emotional & practical support and respite breaks. As well as special projects, including their “We’ve Got Your Back” Pack for children newly diagnosed with cancer in UK hospitals.

We got together with School Home Support and Lennox Children’s Cancer Fund to talk about what this partnership means to us and how it will impact the communities we support. Watch the full video here: 

 

Donate now to support the work that we do with young people and their community in Hackney and Southwark: