The project developed through the work of the Church Rank Foundation funded Youth Worker who with a team of committed volunteers set out to respond to increased reports of anti-social behaviour of young people in Normanton. The outreach work that the Charity has been able to deliver over the first two years is mainly down to a gracious legacy gift from a member of the community. Without whom this project wouldn’t have been possible.
Working for over two years from the back of a minibus, our volunteers went out onto the streets of Normanton and engaged with young people who were hanging around on the streets with nothing to do. This work proved to be incredibly successful and developed into the purchase of a building from which we could centre our work, this also gave us the opportunity to expand our work to offer further activities to the wider community.
The Well Project community building is in the heart of the woodhouse estate in Normanton, from which we base most of our work. The building was officially opened in April 2010, and since then we have expanded our range of activities and continue to grow, but this is only possible through constant fundraising to sustain the project.
As a self-funded Charity project we rely on the good will of organisations to which we must bid for funding. As a group of volunteers and trustees we see a real need for the continuance of the project and we welcome any interested parties who would like to volunteer, help financially or contribute in any way to the future of The Well Project. We run a variety of free open sessions each week for the whole community to access.
We also have volunteers who are trained in a variety of areas including money management and bereavement counselling, and we work closely with our local secondary school Freeston Academy running a mentoring programme, working with young people, who are on the verge of permanent exclusion from main stream education. We work with the young people to help re-engage them back into education so they can achieve, and stand the best chance to achieve for their futures.We also run programmes of activities for young people during the school holidays, to help engage them in positive activity rather than hanging around on the streets causing trouble.
We are the only provider of totally free activities for young people in Normanton. There is no statutory provision and hasn't been for the past 3 years. All the provision and opportunities we provide are free of charge to the community, so as a charity we rely on fundraising and donations to keep the project going. We rely on a network of dedicated volunteers who dedicate their passion and time to enable us to run our sessions and keep our overheads as low as possible.
