We are so excited to share the news that the Edenstone Foundation has partnered with the Proton Foundation, and has very kindly pledged a £5,000 grant to The Flourish Project. This means that FIVE schools across South Wales will benefit from The Flourish Project to help develop mental and emotional wellbeing. 

The funding will be shared between Alway Primary School, Ponthir Church in Wales School, Tredegar Park Primary School in Newport, Libanus Primary School and Blackwood Primary School in Blackwood.

The Flourish Project is a programme we designed to equip young people with the tools to develop healthy self-esteem, mental and emotional well-being.

Phill Mann, the Flourish Project Manager, explained:

“We launched the Flourish Programme in 2017 and have already helped around 1,000 young people develop a healthy self-esteem, mental and emotional well-being. There’s an increasing awareness of mental health and the importance of developing a healthy mindset, particularly in the wake of the pandemic.

The Edenstone Foundation funding for the project is has come from the Magor-based Edenstone Group’s two housing brands – Edenstone Homes and Bluebell Homes, in which they receive a proportion of the proceeds of every home sold to support good causes.

Chris Edge, from the Edenstone Foundation, said: “We recognise that children and young people need help and support as they try to figure out who they are and where they fit with their peers, while also completing their schoolwork and preparing themselves for the future. The challenges of the last 18 months have made this even more apparent and it has never been more importance to safeguard the future health of our children.

By partnering with the Proton Foundation, we’ll be supporting the delivery of the Flourish Programme in five schools. This will hopefully have a long-term impact on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people enabling them to flourish into adulthood.”

To the Edenstone Foundation, we want to thank you for your generosity to the Flourish Project! We are so excited to see the impact that your support will have on the children and young people’s self-esteem, mental and emotional well-being.

Connecting Crossgates is a charity who have a heart to see young people be equipped to reach their full potential. 

As part of this, they recruit volunteers to go into local schools to sit and read with young people who are struggling with their literacy.

Halfway through 2020, Karen who leads the charity started to realise that the need was so much deeper than just the surface level need of young people being able to read. She understood that ‘happy children thrive and unhappy children didn’t thrive’, so she wanted to change the script, to see the young people that they were working alongside begin to thrive.

Hannah, CEO and Founder of The Flourish Project, reflects on Leanne’s encounter.

‘After hearing Leanne’s experience with her latest group, it suddenly occurred to me that ‘we’ never fully understand what’s truly taking place on the inside. If Leanne had judged this boy from his not wanting to speak and enter in, she may have just shrugged him off as another disengaged youth, meaning she would have missed the point.

Our vision is to reach 100,000 young people, yet we train our facilitators to go after the ‘one’.

We hear a number of stories from our facilitators similar to Leanne’s.

We understand the importance of investing in the ‘one’. We understand the significance that can take place where just ‘one’ moment can become a movement in a young person’s life.

We want to help churches, charities, schools and like minded organisations stand in the gap for the ‘one’. The need is huge. Young people need to know their value and worth.

We can be champions (community leads) in our communities. It just takes ‘one’..could you be that one?