Rebuild Project open day

Reporter: Katie Hill
Date online: 26/07/2007

The Rebuild Project in Rochdale welcomed members of the community for an open day today, Thursday 26 July with many people intrigued to find out what was happening at the Project, after a year of helping young people in the borough.

The Project, which works in conjunction with "The Well’ Community Church, and is part of the Christian charity "Jericho Community Projects,’ aims to help people who are classified by the government as the NEET group (not in education, employment or training) and those who face significant barriers in life such as drug and alcohol addiction, to become qualified in construction industry skills such as plastering, brick-laying and tiling.

The programme helps young men and women who have been unemployed for a long time and have no skills or qualifications to gain vocational skills. One to one mentoring as well as Life Coaching is used to help individuals who face multiple barriers in life to work from past to future and transform their self belief, in order to achieve their goals and move on positively with their lives.

Last year the Project was granted the funding for an initial pilot scheme, whereby ten young people referred from the Probation Office, local hostels and similar organisations, would be trained at the premises.

Since last year's initial grant for the pilot scheme, the centre has managed to turn around the lives of several young people, six of whom graduated at today's Open Day. One of these, Danny Craven, commented that: "The scheme has really opened up opportunities for me and the others. I’m looking forward to getting into work again and feel lucky that I had this chance."

Project manager of the Jericho Foundation, Helen Munro, said of the event: "I wanted to hold an open day because the project has generated so much interest and we want people to see where we’re up to. It has also given us a chance to celebrate, given that we held the graduation this morning.

She added that: "The life coaching, mentoring and personal development was really an integral part of what we’ve done, but by using this we have managed to build bridges for people who were struggling and they have now really turned their lives around, it's just a massive success!

"Unfortunately we really do need more funding, as at the moment we are having to turn people away, and these are people who are desperate for a fresh start."

Martin Warner, a trustee for the foundation said: "This whole project started twelve months ago with a vision, and now it is so rewarding to see the results. Now we are gaining confidence and hope to open even more centres."

Eugene Wilson, Technical Director at Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) said: "We’ve held talks with Jericho looking at how we can establish a working relationship. We are hoping to give individuals from the Rebuild Project a chance of work experience, working on some of our projects. We also hope that they can help us in terms of the life skills knowledge that they have as I feel that this could be helpful to some of our employees and tenants alike. Hopefully through this partnership we would be able to offer funding to the Jericho Project so that they can continue to change the lives of young people."

After today’s successful event and the success of the scheme thus far, the Rebuild Project are looking to the future, and the issue of funding. They are also hoping to add more to the programme of skills taught.