Success4All’s Streetwise Winner

by Emily Wastell on September 13, 2017 

The ‘summer blast from the past event’ was hosted by Streetwise to celebrate their 25th Birthday. As part of this they chose to present 25 young people with inspirational youth awards. Success4All nominated one of their volunteers, Maisie, for the amazing work she did for us over the past year, and she was awarded as one of the winners!!!

Maisie supported two children with their studies as part of one to one tuition in our Learning Hubs, and additionally, as a Geography student herself, ran a Geography Club in our Walker Learning Hub to make school life easier for new English learners. After supporting a group of English as an additional language tutees in our Hub, she noticed that it was difficult for them to understand and follow along in their Geography lessons as they were not familiar with the vocabulary. On the last week, she took the group of children to Tynemouth for a fun day out, as well as setting challenges relating to the Geography vocab that they had learnt over the previous weeks. This was really important to the children as they had never been before because of financial barriers.

In order to do this, she had to raise money first. She applied for funding through a grant and successfully received £300 from O2 Think Big. She also decided to organise and run her own fundraising event with friends; she ran her own ‘Come Dine with Me’ experience and sold items on eBay. She raised a further £180, raising £480 in total. She did not spend all of this on a Club, and donated the rest to Success4All. Over the time that Maisie has spent with us, she has always gone that extra mile. She has not only been an encouraging and motivating tutor to those struggling in school; but she has been a positive role model to many of the children and young people that look up to her.

Maisie was invited to go along to the event as a nominee, and here are the events of the day . . .

‘The event began with an introduction from guest speaker Dan Cunningham who performs as Miss Rory in Newcastle’s Boulevard cabaret club. He also presented the awards. He said he enjoyed reading the stories behind the awards and described the event as the Pride of Britain for Newcastle.

Apparently, Streetwise received a high volume of applications and staff members met on three occasions to shortlist and then decide on the final winners.

First, highly commended nominees were then presented with an award.

After that, the 25 winners were announced.  A short description of our work/achievement was read out and we were then each presented with a framed certificate and a commemorative key ring and chocolate gift.

After the awards, there was a BBQ, live music and dance performances and also stations where people could get henna tattoos, festival make up, and caricatures drawn. During this period there was a slideshow that had extended versions of people’s stories and achievements, and I really enjoyed reading about the experiences of other winners.  Many had overcome serious adversity, such as bereavement, mental health issues, and bullying and had gone on to achieve great things, in their personal and academic lives. In the process, they had also helped to inspire other young people, e.g. through mentoring and volunteering.’

Thanks again Maisie, you are a well deserved winner!