Here at Freedom Foundation HQ we’ve been so busy over the last few months responding to communities and ensuring we can still reach children and young people during this challenging time as we slowly move out of lockdown and towards a new normality.
Stacey and I made the decision at the beginning of lockdown to not just Zoom in and out with the children and young people we work with as we felt that for some people not being there all the time might be worse than not being there at all.
So we worked hard to create an amazing online learning community – a safe place where the people we deliver our sessions to can come into and not only receive live sessions but get information, signposting, activities and have the opportunity to talk and share with each other as well as our dedicated teachers.
With overwhelming support from funders and a great team in place we have created our ‘Lockdown Learning’ hub that is convenient to use and easy to access as long as you can get on-line and we launched our Factory programme with schools as well as our Funky Tots and WhatsUp sessions for families. Click here a little sneak preview of the fantastic content your missing out on if you haven’t signed up yet
We have always had a better engagement when collaborating with schools and our community projects are well received with excellent feedback even if we don’t always get the numbers we would like but are looking to continuously improve upon and build a positive dialogue with our target audience as we come are eased out of lockdown.
We were confident that during this time families would welcome the opportunity to receive information in a different way and that interactive sessions they could access at any time along with activities would be well received.
Despite LOTS of promotion, talking to people in those communities and showcasing the hub we had little or no participation. We are now reflecting and taking the learning and as we move into September will focus much more on delivery through our hub as schools will still not allow external providers so we are so pleased to announce we will be using it more.
However, how do we reach those that are most vulnerable and could benefit from this amazing community we have created? Did we presume that this is how people wanted to receive information in this digital world? How do we support people’s mental health as they come out of lockdown and still can’t physically attend sessions? If you have any ideas do get in contact with us !
We will continue to try and reach those people and hope that with your support we can get our community growing and thriving together!
Laura Grant is a co-founder and director of Freedom Foundation
Details of Freedom Foundations Hub and programmes can be found here
www.freedomfoundationuk.org
