A-AWO #womensupportwomen

Left to Right: Sarah-Jane Hill (fundraiser at AWO), Mandy Welland-Taylor and Karen Walker (from Truly Madly Heavenly), Ann Stonehouse (Chair of Assist Networking)

On the 10th October 2012, Assist Networking and AWO combined for a common force for an evening of ladies networking; women supporting women!

The aim of the evening was to spend time together meeting one another over tea, coffee and snacks, exploring the A WAY OUT building, the Gate, and exploring ideas of how women in Teesside can support our work here at A WAY OUT and support eachother.

The wonderful Mandy and Karen of Truly Madly Heavenly ran the evening, with support from our fundraising team. Their fantastic ideas led to a creative mood board session, where each woman had the chance to make a colourful display of ideas. The mood boards were made from magazine clippings, buttons, glittery glue and more, and everyone then presented their mood board on how to support A WAY OUT back to the group for feedback and development of ideas.

The vibe of the evening session was fantastic, the creativity of each person that joined was so encouraging and inspiring. We discussed ideas on how to support women, run events to fundraise for A WAY OUT, run workshop sessions, boost confidence and even more.

One of the ideas that came from the session is the Christmas Afternoon Tea on the 4th December, details of which can be found if you follow this link: Festive Afternoon Tea.

We are so excited for this group of women, committed to doing what they can to support other women. 

#womensupportwomen

If you would like to join A-AWO, fundraise for us, input your creative ideas, run a workshop, or anything else you think of, we would love to hear from you! email Sarah-Jane with ideas and your details, and have a look around our website to see if you can get involved.

We're always looking for volunteers and supporters. Without the work of volunteers, our work here just could not continue. We are so grateful to each and every one of you!

We are really looking forward to the next A-AWO meeting, and seeing how these ideas develop!

Love from A Way Out x

The Stockton River Rat Race 2012

We have been mightily impressed by the determination of a number of our supporters who have committed themselves to crazy challenge events, raising funds for us. You're all MAD for A WAY OUT, and we love you!

The most recent challenge event was one that took place right on our doorstep - the Stockton River Rat Race. The 10K race involves splashing, jumping, kayaking and running, including a jump from the ship just outside of our office into the cool, deep waters of the river Tees.

The full team standing with the Mayor of Stockton

The preliminary warm-up exercises were very important...

Hands up in the air!

Liam doesn't seem to understand it's "Hands in the Air!"

Squats!

Push-ups

We managed to capture a few snapshots of our team near the end of the race, when they weren't swimming through the River Tees...

Near the finish line

Final Rat Race Obstacles

We met our racers at the finish line, and they did fantastically, and even had enough energy to give us a big grin at the end of it all.

We have also had volunteers who have been fundraising for us through Total Warrior again this year, with bungee jumps and more, and we are grateful to you all. Thank you for all you do - your activities help support our life changing work! (We hope you've had fun in the process... ;))

love from

A Way Out x

An Evening of Rags and Muffins

We held another of our popular Rags and Muffins events a few weeks back. This time, we hosted the event in an evening, different to our usual afternoon slot and naturally the evening oozed style, local talent and class! We had catwalks with fabulous models, dance groups, make-up artists, hair designers and more as well as gorgeous cupcakes and vintage clothes to rummage through.

One of our Rags and Muffins models.

Some of the team behind the event: Karen Heritage, Karen Heritage Dancers and Sarah-Jane our community fundraiser.

The Karen Heritage Dance Group in Action.

More from the Dance Group

All clothes that the models wore were for sale by Vintageous Rags, who sponsored the event.

Some of our lovely models from the catwalk.

One of our Rags and Muffins models.

Sarah-Jane, event co-ordinator and volunteer Tom, who compared the evening for us!

As you know, these events are more than just a good time, they're vital to our funds for our work to continue, and also helps us to raise awareness of who we are and what we do. On that note, we would like to take a moment to thank Asda in Thornaby, Stockton, for making us one of their charities of the month, and if you live in the area - we would love your support if you shop at Asda!

Thanks to all those who participated in our Rags and Muffins event, and to all those who came. We couldn't do it without you!

Love from A Way Out x

We Know How To Have A Good Holiday!

Hello and welcome back! We've been away for a couple of weeks but we now have lots of exciting things to update you on.

Today Lizzie, our Education Development worker, told me about what she and the rest of the team have been up to with our younger service users...

"We feel recreational & positive activities are so important at A Way Out. Many people will have childhood memories that they will cherish: picnics, paddling in the sea, playing sports on the beach, going to see annual pantomime, going on a bike ride, the list goes on. Often young people we work with for various reason may not have that opportunity to create those memories."

That's where A Way Out comes in!

"Our holiday activities aim to:

Provide young people with positive experiences

Raise Aspirations

Give young people simple enjoyment, joy & fun

Improve community cohesions & integration

Give young people a sense of acceptance and belonging

Reduce isolation & loneliness

Prevent boredom during the holiday that may lead to risk taking behaviour

Build relationships that may lead to further support for the young person.

So these are some of the things we've been doing:

We’ve had over a 100 Easter eggs donated from A Way Out staff, family & friends, churches and local business. We’ve given out 106 so far and will continue to distribute them the rest of the week."

We started with an Easter bonnet competition in one of our school groups:

"Then we had an afternoon on Port Clarence distributing Easter Eggs and playing games on the field. We met lots of new young people and were able to invite them to our Saltburn beach trip happening later on in the week."

"Tuesday, outreach workers, Mark and Matty took some lads to Preston Park for a BBQ and a game of Crazy golf. Much to his delight, Mark won!"

"Wednesday, we had a very wet & muddy trip up to Roseberry Topping,  a very quick picnic at the top as a storm was on its way and then made our way back down. 12 out the 13 young people had never been up before so it was certainly a new experience for them and they felt quite proud when they made it to the top! Especially the young people that were scared of heights!"

"And today we are having a girls treat to bowling and pizza hut and tomorrow we are ending the holiday with a beach trip to Saltburn providing the weather is okay... There might have to be a contingency plan of the cinema if not!"

Love from A Way Out x

We Love To Shout About What We're Up To!

This is the fundraising board in our office:

We like to be able to let everyone else in the office know what we're up to and what they can get involved in!  This is right in the middle of the building and so we all pass it every day whilst going about our work.

We think that it's so important to honour those who support us and so we have a little section of thank yous, for those who give to A Way Out, who have taken part in an event or volunteered with us. We also have newspaper cuttings and photos from events as well as prayer requests and an update on how much we've raised.

It's great as well when we have visitors here as they can see at a glance what we've been up to.

These are the events that are coming up next: a Charity Fashion Show at Teesside Uni, Bag Packs at Asda and Morrisons, Total Warrior in the Lake District and Afternoon Tea at Crathorne Hall. And we also have places for bungee jumpers at the Transporter Bridge! What takes your fancy?

I came in this morning to discover that another big black board has been put up for the projects team to do something similar. At the moment there are photos and posters scattered around the building but it's going to be even better to see everything at a glance and right next to the fundraising board too. We wouldn't be running any of these events if we weren't supporting the really inspiring, creative and life-changing work that our project workers do. Having this information side by side seems really appropriate :)

Why not pop by and see this sometime?

Love from A Way Out x