Our office base in Rawtenstall will be shut from the afternoon of 24th December to 1 January, reopening on Friday 2nd January.
On 29, 30 December and 31 December, workers will be available on their mobile phones or by email.
Our on call service for Householders and young people will cover Out of Hours and Bank Holidays when the project is closed.
Merry Christmas
In April 2014, worked with a group of students from Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School, researching a local social issue – homelessness amongst young people.
Here is a fantastic video they made as part of their presentation, highlighting why and how homelessness affects young people. Thanks to Rebecca, Eliza, Olivia, Molly and Sophie.
Our latest Annual Report covers our financial year Sept 2012 to October 2013 and contains an overview of our work during this time, as well some of the challenges for the future.
Read it here: Annual Report Financial Year Sept 2012 Oct 2013
Our office base in Rawtenstall will be shut from the afternoon of 24th December to 1 January, reopening on 2nd January.
On 27,28 December and 30,31 December, workers will be available on their mobile phones or by email.
Our on call service for Householders and young people will cover Out of Hours and the Bank Holidays (25,26 Dec and 1 Jan) when the project is closed.
Merry Christmas
M3 Project is delighted to announce that we are now a Registered Charity (No. 1154113) having successfully applied to the Charities Commission. This new charitable status will give us more scope to expand our service delivery, as well as develop a greater campaigning role within East Lancashire and beyond.
It will also enable the project to diversify its sources of funding, opening up new areas of revenue previously not open to us. Look out for further details of how you can become involved in M3’s work with young homeless people, as well as how you can help.
It’s 10 years since M3 Project was set up and on 28th June we held a Celebration Party. We asked our guests to tell us what M3 had meant to them and here are some of the comments we received:
Through their Community Life programme, Asda Rawtenstall has kindly raised money for M3, with their token drop scheme. Over recent weeks, customers leaving the store nominated their choice from 3 local charities and M3 received the most nominations.
Project Manager Alan Dorrington went to meet Laura Saxton from Asda to receive a £50 cheque.
Many thanks from all at the project to all that nominated us and to Asda for working with local groups in this way.
Following receipt of grant funding from the European Social Fund and the Skills Funding Agency, M3 Project’s new social enterprise for young people, Dirty Products, got underway in August 2012.
An initial 3 day course involving 2 young people from M3 began looking at the different aspects of the planned work and the skills young could acquire from the process. Product design featured prominently in the initial stages and a trip to a local mountain bike shop was arranged to gain feedback. Following further work, the initial idea to produce soap based washing products for mountain bikers and other outdoor activists was expanded to incorporate a towel/washbag element. It was this washbag product that has formed the basis for the development of the project so far.
Further weekly sessions, including a new young person, have concentrated on the design of the bag, what its contents might include and the business, marketing and distribution models that could be used. Contacts and visits to potential raw material suppliers, manufacturers and other distribution outlets have resulted in the fabrication of some prototype/sample ‘Dirt Bags’….
Current work that young people will be involved in to progress the project includes:
The M3 office will shut at 2pm on Friday 21 December and will reopen on Thursday 27 December at 10am.
We are open on Thursday 27, Friday 28 and Monday 31 December till 3pm before closing again for New Year.
We reopen for 2013 on Wednesday 2 Jan.
Our 24hr on-call service for Householders and Young People will operate throughout the Christmas and New Year period.
Thanks to the award of a grant from the European Social Fund, we are pleased to announce the start of our new social enterprise opportunity for young people.
It is clear from problems such as rising youth homelessness and unemployment that a whole generation of disadvantaged young people are at risk of failing to reach their potential, at huge cost to the UK economy and our society. In Rossendale, as elsewhere, this problem is particularly pertinent. Young people accommodated by M3 are facing ever shrinking opportunities to engage in training and work as a number of local training providers have shut recently, and the labour market is particularly hostile to young people at present.
Whilst the project works with young people around their accommodation and independent living skills, M3 believes that social enterprise is a missing component of that solution. Young people can benefit from enterprises that can build their skills and confidence; that can create and keep wealth within deprived communities; and that can build trust, responsibility, provide role models, reward hard work and give young people a voice and a stake in what they do.
This programme addresses all of those issues by bringing these aspects of young people‟s interests together, whilst also helping them to create their own routes to employment and contribute to local economic growth.
‘Dirty Products’ is a flexible and engaging 6 x half-day programme that puts the emphasis on learning skills that will enable young people to prosper in their personal lives. The course can also be used with a diverse number of groups with the aim of nurturing a business-related career path. It is designed flexibly around six modules that will be ideal for learning the basics of business-start-up, financial management and marketing. (Along the way the workshops will increase confidence, skills and experience of the world of commerce/business/enterprise.)
The workshops allow Young People to work in teams to design, create, package and market products from scratch based on an ‘Adrenaline Sports’ theme– soap, shower gel, bike cleaner, clothing etc ‘ Support for the programme and distribution of products made has been arranged with Ride-On, an established mountain bike shop based in the Rossendale Valley. The collaboration and support from the shop will greatly contribute to the success of this new project.