Tips for parents caring for children and home-schooling while remote working With schools and nurseries once again closed due to COVID – 19, many of us will need to balance remote working with childcare and home schooling. Just working from home can...
We are delighted to have partnered with Rock Trust, Scotland’s leading youth homelessness charity, to help bring awareness of youth homelessness to the Scottish Borders.
The charity is marking 30 years of work supporting vulnerable and at-risk young people by bringing the issue of youth homelessness right into the core of the community. The self-styled ‘Sofa Stories’ installation has appeared in community spaces across Scotland in the lead up to World Homelessness Day on 10th October.
When our very own Karin Moroney (Account Manager) saw how successful and engaging these events had been, she just had to see if Rock Trust would bring them to the Scottish Borders. The Rock Trust will be pitching up the installation at Tesco Extra in Galashiels on 4th December!
The event aims to highlight the hidden nature of youth homelessness. Many of us associate homelessness with rough sleeping and rooflessness, but this isn’t the case for 7,303* young people in Scotland. Through relationship breakdown or trauma, many young people end up sleeping on sofas (sofa surfing) or floors of friends and even strangers for short periods, placing them at significant risk of exploitation and abuse and their future at risk. Because of this, Rock Trust is using its 30th anniversary year to make the invisible nature of youth homelessness visible.
The new Sofa Stories event dates include:
3rd December – Livingston Designer Outlet, Livingston, from 10.00 am
4th December – Tesco Extra, Galashiels, from 10.00 am.
The charity invites all press and radio community members to come along and chat on their sofa or with the support team. Please come along and get involved!
Kate Polson, CEO of Rock Trust, had this to say about the local focus of Rock Trust’s campaign:
“It is incredibly important that we all recognise the extent of the youth homelessness crisis in Scotland, the majority of which is hidden from community view. Young people have so much potential if given the right support from their communities and that begins by having a conversation about what exactly youth homelessness is and how we can work together to fix it. The response from local businesses and communities has been fantastic, all willing to make time and space for us to engage in this conversation and ultimately, to bring more people on board with the mission to end youth homelessness”
Karin Moroney, Account Manager at SoConnect Ltd had this to say about the event:
“Many think of homelessness as being endemic to large cities. However, even in the idyllic Scottish Borders, we cannot ignore the issue of Youth Homelessness. Rock Trust has been a customer of SoConnect Ltd for almost four years, and in that time, we have built a strong working relationship. I am delighted that they agreed to our invitation to bring ‘Sofa Stories’ to the Borders to highlight the support that is available to this vulnerable section of our community.”
Iain Allan Mills, Project Manager at Rock Trust had this to say about the local focus of Rock Trust’s campaign:
“We’re reaching out to local communities by using an installation that will hopefully get people to stop, engage with our team and ask questions about the nature of youth homelessness. Come and talk to us, find out what we do, learn about our projects and how you can do your part to prevent another young person from becoming homeless this winter. ”
In addition to their ‘Sofa Stories’ community events, the Rock Trust will mark its 30th year by publishing an anthology of works by some of Scotland’s most well-known authors alongside the voices of youth homelessness. Star authors like Sara Sheridan, Kirstin Innes, Val McDermid, Jenny Lindsay, and Helen Sedgwick are supporting the Anthology with their work to stand proudly alongside some work from Rock Trust’s young people. They aim to publish the Anthology in partnership with Edinburgh publishers Taproot in March 2022. The Anthology is available for pre-order at rocktrust.org.
Help Rock Trust #FixTheFuture by texting ‘FUTURE’ to 70580 to donate just £3 and help end youth homelessness**
*Figure taken from the Scottish Government Youth homelessness statistics document: 2019 to 2020 (www.gov.scot)
**You’ll be opting in to hear more about our work and fundraising via telephone and SMS. If you’d like to give £3 but do not wish to receive marketing communications, text FUTURENOINFO to 70580.
Reply a Comment