Paul, one of our senior instructors, has made this lovely video about our BF Garden which has been set up by young people in 2010 as an ongoing project. What started with a piece of land covered in wild shrub has developed into a beautiful garden in which we grow potatoes, beans, lettuce, various fruits and much more.
In 2011 BF Adventure has helped hundreds of disadvantaged and disaffected children and young people in Cornwall to believe in themselves and build a brighter Future!
In total we ran more than 8000 activity sessions for just under 3000 individuals.
In addition to various groups with additional support needs who came to us for a day or for a short residential stay, we ran structured long-term programmes for:
We are so pleased with the great results and are looking to achieve even more in 2012. This year we are aiming to raise enough money to start replacing our old portacabins with new indoor space which will enable us to work with twice as many children and young people who need our support.
For more information about our “Building Brighter Futures” Appeal please click on the link http://www.bfadventure.org/bbf.html
Last week on Thursday BF Adventure was invited by the Rotary Club of Cober Valley to discover Poldark Mine and enjoy a delicious Christmas lunch afterwards.
20 current and former BFA students attended. The group was welcomed by the Rotarians with juice and mince pies and we then had a guided tour to explore the mine. Everyone had to put on helmets and we climbed down the steep metal steps to 125 metres below ground. Everyone was shocked to hear that at the time when the mine was a working mine, children as young as 8 had to work 12 hour shifts for 6 days a week. Our tour finished in front of the mine’s letter box which apparently is the only underground letter box in Britain.
Back at the restaurant we were served a delicious Christmas lunch followed by a tasty Christmas Pudding with clotted cream. Yum! After the lunch everyone was presented with certificates for their special achievements like Josh working hard on this Reading and Writing Skills or Joe being particular brave when abseiling. As a special surprise each child also got a little Christmas present which had been donated by generous people from the community.
A big thank you to the Rotary Club of Cober Valley and Poldark Mine who made it possible for us to attend such an amazing event. Everyone had a brilliant day and we are already looking forward to next year’s Christmas lunch!
We are really happy to announce that our Building Brighter Futures appeal page is now live.
Have a look and let us know what you think:
http://www.bfadventure.org/bbf.html
We are looking to raise an initial £50k to get our big building project up and running so that we can help twice as many children in Cornwall!
Last week BF Adventure received some very good news:
The West Cornwall Youth Trust has again granted us funding to subsidise multi-activity days for young people who are 10 to 21 years old, are disadvantaged or disabled and live in the West of Cornwall.
Because of the funding we are now able to offer exciting activity days for only £5 per person per day. Blog readers who would like to know more can click here to learn more click here.
Dear Friends of BF Adventure,
Christmas is only a few weeks away! Whilst most of us are looking forward to Christmas dinners and exchanging presents with our loved ones, many of our young clients are unlikely to have such a positive experience due to poverty or their family situation.
At BF Adventure we work with the most vulnerable and hardest to reach children and young people of Cornwall.
To make sure that they too can remember this time as something special we arrange a big Christmas dinner each year in December.
Christmas Dinner 2010
We really want to surprise them with a present too, but as a charity it is impossible for us to fund, so we would like to ask for your help!
By donating a small Christmas present (not more than £10) for one of our 38 long-term clients (aged between 9 – 19 years), you would make all the difference to a young person!
If you would like to help, please send an email to britta@bfadventure.org or phone me on 01326 341 803 and I will send you the first name and age of the child you will be donating a present to.
Many thanks for your generosity.
Best wishes
Britta Hoffmann
on behalf of the BF Adventure Team
Yesterday we received a heart-warming email from Becky (now 18) who spent some time with us in 2010.
In her letter she wrote:
“I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been so nice and has helped me to find my life back.
When I came to BFA, everything was a total mess. I hadn’t attended college in months, because I was bullied by my class mates. I had problems with eating and sleeping and had no one to talk to.
Kim (instructor at BFA) has helped me to talk about my problems and to believe in myself. Sometimes when I feel down I think about what she said to me and everything doesn’t seem as rubbish anymore.
I also learned how to eat healthy stuff and that I don’t have to be scared of people that I don’t know. I have just started my second year at college and want to become a youth worker too so I can help other people to do something useful with their time.”
Thank you Becky. We are really happy to hear from you and to know that you are doing well 
Earlier in October we hosted our first ever Quarryathon, a challenge with a difference which transformed our Goodygrane Activity Centre into a 1.5 mile assault course against the clock!
18 teams cam
e to the site to try out our zip-wire and adventure quarry as well as scrambling through our woodland and shooting some arrows in our archery area.
Despite the weather, all the teams mustered the courage and most arrived in fancy dress (which was requested but not compulsory) resulting in an impressive array of characters from superheroes to rogue nuns! The day’s events were celebrated with an awards ceremony followed by a deserved party in our marquee. The barbeque, manned by our CEO Adrian Richards, kept the burgers rolling and local band Merlin’s Rockit http://www.merlinsrockit.co.uk/ kept everybody on their feet for lots of laughter and even a snaking conga line!
Due to the day’s success, the Quarryathon is to become an annual fundraising event. John Craze, team member of ‘Nuns on the Run’ said: “We had such a great time taking part in the Quarryathon whilst supporting a good cause. We will definitely be coming back in 2012.”
Sponsorship money is still coming in and will go towards our ‘Building Brighter Futures Appeal’ which aims to create more indoor space on our site and help us reach more disadvantaged people in Cornwall.
Thank you to all those who took part and if you didn’t, we hope to see you next year – watch this space!
More than 100 young people have come to BF Adventure’s Goodygrane activity centre in the past 6 weeks to join us on our short break programme for disabled children. What a record number!
Thank you card
The activity days funded by Aiming High for disabled children were held as family days, within peer groups or formed part of our holiday activities helping participants to have a respite break, trying something new, pushing their boundaries and gaining more confidence.
We are so pleased about all the great success stories that resulted of the programme like the story of little Alanna who is 10 and suffers from Autism.
Before coming to BF Adventure, Alanna was terrified of water but her mum asked if we could perhaps just go for a walk and show her our canoe quarry. By the end of the day Alanna had not only seen the quarry but had also spent an hour canoeing and is now planning to come back to go for a swim next time; something that had been unthinkable before her visit.
We can’t count the number of thank you notes we have received including a lovely card from Grace (16) who is visually impaired and visited us with her family, spending the day braving the Zip wire, popping balloons on the Archery targets and Kayaking.
Grace braving the Zip wire
Another email was received from a family support worker about Jack, 7 who suffers from Sensory processing disorder.
She said: “After each of Jack’s sessions he has been coming home much happier than he has been leaving in the mornings. Jack has also been better behaved the following days. His Mum has asked if it would be possible for Jack to do more activities with you as he has gained so many new skills and had the opportunity to try new things.”
The short breaks for children with disabilities will be on offer until August 2012. For more information or to receive a referral form, click here.
Latest figures by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a further 15,000 16 to 24-year-olds are now unemployed – a total of 949,000 people or 20.2%. These are alarming figures and some have argued that the rise in youth unemployment might have been one of the reasons for the recent riots in the UK.
I wonder, what it must feel like to be at a time in your life when you should think that the world is your oyster but instead you wake up every morning having nothing to do and nowhere to go? Unemployed, without any work experience and no role models that will help you to gain the confidence to get out of that situation?
With no hope for your future, would you even think about your career? Or would you just be frustrated and where would that frustration lead you to?
At BF Adventure we help young people to get engaged, increase their self-esteem and get the qualifications that they need to move on to apprenticeships or to go to college.
