New Programme Combines Snow Sports With Mental Health
February 22, 2019
Snow-Camp, a UK charity using snowsports to change the lives of inner-city youth, has announced the launch of their new Mental Health Programme, Uplift. Since 2003, Snow-Camp has provided innovative youth development programmes in London.
The programme will contain a number of workshops and 1-1 support sessions that will help young people suffering from low self-esteem, self-confidence and self-defeating beliefs. The workshops will teach young people invaluable coping mechanisms to help deal with toxic attachments, societal conditioning and addictions.
The decision to launch the new programme comes as a result of the charity’s monitoring and evaluation data, which revealed 83% of the young people they worked with last year felt they needed more mental health support.
The program name, “Uplift,” was chosen by the youth volunteers as it relates to skiing and mental wellbeing. The youth volunteers will be trialling the programme over the next few months and Snow-Camp hopes to run the programme alongside the charity’s core snowsports programmes next year.
The programme will be funded by the George Bairstow Charitable Trust, a Trust set up in honour of George Bairstow who was tragically killed in a car accident in 2013, whilst commuting home from a shift volunteering for St John Ambulance. The Trust aims to support young people who, like George, want to volunteer in their community and have a passion for helping others in need.
Kevin Hempstead, a renowned humanistic counsellor and registered BACP member, will be advising the delivery of the programme alongside Doctor Carla Stanton.
Lara Kinnear, Snow-Camp’s Operations Director said: “We know that a lot of the young people we work with live in areas with high levels of deprivation and many have faced a number of significant traumas in their young lives including knife and gang crime.”
“We know first-hand that there is so much more work that needs to be done to support young people across inner-city London.”
Maria Bairstow, Chairman of George Bairstow Trust’s Trustees said: “We’re incredibly proud to be helping Snow-Camp launch their new Mental Health Programme that has the potential to help support hundreds of young people.”