We have been busy working out our stats from last year.  80 young people and staff took part in programmes last year and the outcomes reported are an increase in motivation, confidence, resilience, positive emotion and calmness. 96% of young people feel more positive and calm about going into the world of work and have got jobs/apprenticeships as a result.  88% feel more motivated and confident after participating in our resilience programme.  Great results and we are optimistic that 2016’s statistics will be just as good if not better!

The past month has seen Find Your Spark travelling across London, Suffolk, Essex and even to France in order to deliver conferences, trainings and presentations on the effectiveness of coaching and positive psychology for at risk young people.

We have picked up a lot of tips and learning along the way, for example when speaking at the European Positive Psychology Conference we learnt that: (more…)

I write this in the scorching heat as Summer has well and truly arrived (well for the next couple of days at least!) The past month has been a bit of a whirlwind for me/Find Your Spark which I am now musing reflectively. 

I have spent the last nine months starting up Find Your Spark in North Essex which has meant attending a lot of meetings, drinking lots of cups of tea/coffee and sending lots and lots of emails!  I am delighted to say that all the seeds that I have been planting over the last six months are beginning to sprout and finally everything has begun to fall into place. (more…)

We here at Find Your Spark HQ always like to receive feedback on how we are doing and what impact we are making (especially if its positive! 😉  

This month, we were delighted to receive this wonderful endorsement from Fight for Peace, following a workshop we delivered in January. Thanks Fight for Peace for having us and we look forward to working with you again soon!

Fight for Peace commissioned Find Your Spark to run a Resilience Programme at the Academy this year. Both the young people/staff found the Resilience programme very informative and engaging. So much so, that staff have come back and requested additional training by Find your Spark as a result.

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Check out the positive psychology coaching research by founder Michelle Pritchard & Christian van Nieuwerburgh

Objectives: The research sought to analyse the perceptual life changes and perceived quality of life (PQoL) subsequent to participating in an integrated coaching and PPI programme.

Design: A qualitative approach was employed and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was utilised to analyse the data. (more…)

This month’s blog post/musing on this grey and rainy day is on the topic of persistence.  Something that I have learnt to have as a business owner of a Social Enterprise with a mission of doing good in a world where money talks.  You have to be persistent, tenacious and NOT GIVE UP as it is a tough world out there and in order to make it you need to keep going, keep trying, keep evolving until one day, when you least expect it, you will.

I say this as a reminder to myself more than anything and hopefully to inspire you to continue even when the going gets tough.  You will get little glimmers of what life will be like should you keep going, as I did when I was humbled to receive the accolade of one of the top 10 female UK Entrepreneurs to watch out for: http://www.abouttimemagazine.co.uk/life/top-10-young-female-entrepreneurs-to-watch-uk/

Prior to this and even now, there were times i wanted to give up and life was and can be a struggle.  But I didn’t because I believe in the cause and you never know what is around the corner.

Always have in mind, should you ever wish to give up, that tomorrow could just be the day when it turns around for you and when it does, you will grateful that you did not give up.  Good luck readers and feel free to comment below with any thoughts you may have! 🙂

Find Your Spark delivers positive psychology coaching programmes to young people across London, Essex and Kent.

This month I wanted to share something I saw on the change.org website which is written by a London teacher called Eleanor Rudd.  It perfectly explains what a lot of our young people are experiencing and how schools are setting our young people to struggle.  Please share your comments below.

“I think that more thorough Mental Health education and practical support methods need to be taught in schools and colleges. Student resilience is at its lowest I have noticed in some of my cohorts before. They are facing challenging circumstances: they may not ever go to university despite a a recent historical educational pressure to choose that option and if they do, they take on a huge financial burden, many just to attend school or college are in financial difficulty requiring school/college bursaries which rarely actually cover their travel needs, many are not educated adequately regarding banking, budgeting, benefits, taxes, voter registration and democracy, volunteering, sexual health, how to sign up to a GP or appropriately use the health service, how to seek support re housing, loans etc. Our education system is failing our young people in so many ways to not prepare them for real life, as well as pre employment – it should be no surprise that mental health is becoming such a big issue for our students. It is evident in the high numbers of people 30 and under who are suffering with depression and anxiety (plus others) as these issues re education are nothing new. However, we have now been living in a society of cuts and debt and very few wage increases for a larger part of these students lives as well, so the impact is apparent for them at a younger age as well.

Mental health education must be included on the syllabus. Teachers must be trained to recognise symptoms, to know how to react and not stigmatise! How to support a student who self harms, as well as make an appropriate support referral. These to me are as integral as the student having their English gcse. What is the point of having their English gcse if they cannot deal with their mental health appropriately and are not job ready in that respect??”

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes (as written by author of Walking on Sunshine, Rachel Kelly)

For many of us, life revolves around a series of big decisions, which anchor the hundreds of smaller decisions we make each day. Which A-levels to take? Which university offers to accept? Which jobs to apply to and which opportunities to seize? We often navigate these decisions motivated by the harmful misconception that there is such a thing as a good decision and a bad decision; that we are playing for failure or success.  But life is more complicated than that. Good ideas can have bad results and supposedly bad ideas can lead to something good. Perceived mistakes and failures can be the stepping-stones to something wonderful if we have the right attitude. The ‘how’ is more important than the ‘what’.

Walking on Sunshine: 52 Small Steps to Happiness is published by Short Books and is available for purchase on Amazon. For more information please follow Rachel on Twitter @RachelKellyNet or visit www.rachel-kelly.net.  

Rachel Kelly is also speaking in conversation with Jane Garvey from BBC’s Women’s Hour about her experience of depression on Wednesday 10th February at Conway Hall, Holborn, 7pm.  Further details on this can be found on the Action for Happiness website.

UEL Alumni Network Magazine Now & Then, Issue 17

We had the honour of having an article written up about Find Your Spark and the work we do as part of the Good Business column.  The Good Business column catches up with people who are leading social change. It is created in collaboration with Impact Hub Islington, a co-working and business incubation space in London for socially-minded entrepreneurs.  To read the article in its entirety, click here.

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