Poverty Solution Foundation

the letters P S F in a white and brown circle on a dark background

Tell us about your organisation:

Our Vision:

Alleviating inequality and poverty by promoting education, social welfare, health and wellbeing of children and young people; Building their confidence and self-esteem, empowering and enabling them have a better quality of life and achieving their potentials.

Aims:

To reduce child, youth and family poverty, and reduce poor school performances and poor health.
To empower people through education, welfare support, health and wellbeing support. We support children and youth, their family (mainly mothers) from the BAME community.
To see every child succeed, excel and achieve despite their background, race or gender.
To support, educate and equip mothers so that they are be able to support their children.

What we do:

Education support, skill and career building
Health and wellbeing support
Welfare support and community building

Who do you serve? How do they access services?

We support mainly Black and Ethic groups but also others groups. People can come directly to us, can be referred to us by our users, religious places, school and others. Our door is open to all however we cannot take beyond our capacity and may turn people down

What are your current projects or services?

We promote and protect health by providing regular health and wellbeing sessions, seminars and workshops exploring different topics, promoting inclusion and fighting inequality. These helps families build confidence and good self-esteem. We provide educational support, resources and materials, and homework support. We also provide relief such as food or bus passes for school.

Our health and wellbeing events occur monthly. Some are aimed at women and mothers and others for youth. We have two additional sessions in the year for everyone and families. The two larger sessions are for updates, feedback, and community/social inclusion with food.

We run our youth programs after school on a Friday. We explore lots of topics, especially mental health, resilience- building, managing exam and peer pressure etc. We bring in consultants/professionals working with CAMHS/children and young people service, teachers, and GPs to speak on these topics. A hot meal is offered each time along with writing materials or a bus pass to some who are struggling. The youth see it as a safe place where they can ask professionals questions and clarify their worries or learn about different topics.

Our health and wellbeing seminars for mothers happen on a quarterly basis. We started these seminars because we wanted to increase awareness and reduce stigma around different topics, including health and specifically mental health. Through these seminars, parents gain awareness of these issues and a greater understanding of the issues children might be facing and how to talk about them. The women learn about women's health, self-care, as well as how to support their children and their own mental health. The feedback has been very positive and numbers in attendance are increasing all the time.

Life is full of challenges and inequities and the pressure to achieve or be like others can impact on their emotional well-being. PSF address these challenges by working with families providing support.