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February Newsletter
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February Newsletter

By February 9, 2024August 30th, 2024No Comments
We were devastated to hear that one of our participants and volunteers, Josh, sadly lost his life in November. He was one of the most kind hearted people we ever met. Always sticking up for people that got bullied; always happy to see you; always keen to help and give support. A family man, with a strong set of morals who would do anything for those close to him. A big motivation and inspiration to why we set up Carney’s and integral to both building and shaping what we do.  Not to mention the amount of volunteering he did with things like our boxing shows, events and clearing out the building when we first got it. Loved by many, he will be missed and will continue to inspire.
We would like to say a big thankyou to Maria’s Fish and Kebab shop for supporting Carney’s, who have now provided over 60 meals for our participants after their boxing sessions.
Congratulations to our participant Janaiya, who has been doing brilliantly recently.  She started with us nearly 5 years ago and has been one of the most consistent members of the boxing sessions.  Earlier this year she had her first bout (obviously got the “W”) and in December she sat on a panel to discuss how to best support young people to develop positive personal identities, not constrained by stereotypes and easily made the best and most relevant contributions.  She will be appearing on another panel discussion on the 8th February at Balham Library at 6pm.
We hosted another great Fitzroy Lodge show at Carney’s Community Centre on Sunday the 12th November with 20 boxers taking part. Big thanks to all the Boxing clubs, Boxers, Coaches, Officials and Volunteers for making it possible. Also, thanks as always to Nick Cornwall for the photos.
Congratulations to our participant, Osmond, for winning the Young Hero Award at the National Lottery Awards2023, for the development of his board game, Life is what you make it, based on his experience of growing up on the Winstanley Estate Battersea. It is an interactive board game that engages young people in issue-based dialogue. The game is designed to educate young people about the choices they make, with a focus on tackling challenging gang related issues in an accessible, engaging, and compelling way. It links with PSHE curriculum for Key stage 3 and has been designed for educational and youth club settings.  The game lets individuals play out the consequences in a safe environment. Over the past 10 years he has worked with the Agency at @BAC to create and develop the game, including making a life size version, which will be used as a resource at festivals, schools, and youth centres. We have used it with multiple groups, and they have all really benefitted from and enjoyed it. Watch out for a celebration/motivation event, based on this and other local participants/resident’s successes in the next year, with Battersea Arts Centre and Carneys Community (and funding support from Make My Mark).
A massive thank you to our brilliant volunteers Nick and Pim who kindly took on a project to renovate our tired planters, this took months of planning, organising, and meeting with local companies to secure donated materials for the rebuild. Hours of their time went into this project and without them, we would not have been able to do it. They even got our staff member Ahmed and young person Tommy involved to help out, and collectively they all smashed it! The planters have made such a difference and brightened up the front of our centre!
In February we will be relaunching our bike workshops, where participants will be engaging in a combination of bike related activities and our 5 week bike maintenance course, which will qualify them to earn a bike and then give them an opportunity to work in our “Battersea Bike Social Enterprise”, which will be open every 6 weeks.
As usual, we celebrated Christmas with our participants by delivering a special Christmas boxing session, followed by an amazing Christmas meal and gifts for all that engaged.  Big thanks to all our coaches, Chefs and staff that made it happen, and another thank you to those that helped us provide gifts, such as Mercedes, The Caring Family Foundation, City Harvest, Dorington PLC and Beauty Banks.
We had another amazing Boyo (Boxing and Yoga) fundraiser delivered in December, delivered by both Live Karma Yoga and Carney’s Coaches. Which helped us reach our Big Give Fundraising goal. Big thanks to everyone who took part and contributed.
Big thanks to Media Fight Night who have chosen Carney’s as one of the charities they support.  They put on an amazing charity Boxing Dinner show in November, which saw our ex-participant and volunteer, Mayowa, get in the ring and deliver a brilliant speech on how Carney’s has helped both him personally and the community he is a part of.  Watch out for what promises to be another show stopping tournament with Media Fight Night later.
We partnered with AIM High and Twin Barber’s to help 6 participants complete a barbering course held at Carney’s Community Centre.  A huge congratulations to all who qualified, with some having already found work as a barber.
We have seen our participants struggle to get employment, for two key reasons.  One is the fact that they may have a criminal record and the other is that they may have Special Educational Needs (SEN).  So one of our key focuses for 2024 is to campaign for better access to employment opportunities, for people that fall into at least one of these categories.  We are looking for businesses that can offer real work opportunities to people in these categories and recognise not only the financial returns, but also the social returns that employment can bring.  Please expect to see more around us campaigning for this in 2024 and if you are able to (or know of others that are able to) offer real work opportunities, please get in touch.
“Have you ever donated financially to Carneys? 
Thank you to all you amazing humans who have been part of our story and enabled hundreds of young people’s lives to be turned around. At Carney’s we’re all about the long term, we know that you can’t change someone’s life overnight. There are many steps forwards as well as backwards. And so we provide consistent, long term support over many years. That’s why it’s so important to us that we can effectively plan for the future.
If you’re planning on giving a one-off financial gift to Carney’s, would you consider making that a monthly donation instead? If you’d planned to donate £120, how about making that a £10 a month donation instead? No difference, right? Well, for us, being able to predict income in advance helps us with long range budgeting and planning. It’s much easier to commit to hiring a new staff member if we can estimate our income based on regular giving. And for you, a monthly donation means you can spread the financial impact of giving over a whole year, rather than a burden in one particular month. We’re also thinking of ways we can keep our regular donors more involved in what we’re doing and ways we can thank you for your commitment. We’ll keep you posted.
You can easily set up a monthly donation to Carney’s using our Just Giving page here: www.justgiving.com/carneyscommunity. Click on the donate button and then click monthly. And if needed it’s easy to change the amount you give or finish the donation at any time.”

“Are you a keen cyclist? Would you like a place for the Ride London-Essex 2024 and to raise money for Carney’s at the same time? 

We have 5 spaces available for the Ride London – Essex 60 mile on Sunday 26th May 2024. You can find more details about the event here: https://www.ridelondon.co.uk/our-rides/ridelondon-essex-60 We ask that those who take part commit to fundraising at least £1,000. If you are interested in a place, please get in touch to let us know.”