Monday, July 25, 2011

Being Ten

Framework, the charity I work for, is ten this month. In some ways this still comes as a surprise to me. It feels like we’ve been around forever. If you went out into the town and city centres of Nottinghamshire and started asking people who Framework are, it wouldn’t take long before you found someone who not only knew who we were, but probably knew someone who had been supported by us.

We’ve grown an awful lot since we emerged from a coming together of ‘Nottingham Help the Homeless’ and the ‘Macedon Trust’ in 2002. I wasn’t around back then because I joined in 2009. I’m a quick study though and the last three years have been an overwhelmingly positive experience. You could say I’m like a (ten year old) kid in a sweetshop.

As far as ten year old go, some are out playing most of the time, suffering knee scrapes or getting bike pedal mud on the bottom of their trousers. At Framework we’re not really that different. For the time I’ve worked here, I’ve seen many of our Service Users in scrapes and our staff knee deep in mud, trying to carve out a path for them.

However, it is worth remembering that some ten year olds are not as lucky as others. We see many families who are in turmoil, trying to keep their heads above the choppy financial waters and dealing with a host of social problems along the way. The ten year olds who live in these households often miss out on the opportunities of their peers. They may be underachievers at school and getting up to things they shouldn’t. They may witness domestic violence and sometimes they may suffer it.

To be ten should mean that your days are filled with making new friends, overcoming difficulties, learning new things and being challenged to find that one thing which you are better at than everyone else.

We’re certainly trying to do all of those things here at Framework but more importantly we’re trying to help others to do that too.

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