26 July 2021
This month, we’re celebrating a major funding milestone by raising £100k for our youth homelessness charity Centrepoint.
The funding is helping Centrepoint to provide homeless young people with not only a safe place to stay, but also specialist health support and access to education, training and employment programmes that will ultimately enable vulnerable young people to move on to live independently.
For every £1 fundraised by our colleagues and residents, we’re matching the donation. The partnership has seen a wide variety of events take place including most recently, by a group of retirees and their Development Manager at Homefarris House in Shaftesbury who all took part in a sponsored 12-hour stay up event from their development lounge. The independent retirement development residents raised £600 which we then matched, bringing the total to £1200.
FirstPort CEO Nigel Howell says: “We’re delighted to reach this incredible fundraising milestone for our charity partner Centrepoint. I would like to thank FirstPort colleagues and residents for all their fundraising efforts over the past three years. Together, we can help make a real difference to the lives of our society’s most vulnerable young people.”
Julie Milnes, Director of Fundraising at Centrepoint, said: “We are extremely grateful for the support FirstPort has shown and it has been fantastic to see so many FirstPort employees taking part in a variety of creative fundraising activities, particularly in our recent Stay:Up event.
“Their efforts are already making a massive difference to the homeless young people we support. Thousands of young people are homeless, or at risk of homelessness and FirstPort’s support means we can continue to support young people to turn their lives around, despite the future of uncertainty.”
We became the charity’s official partner in 2018. As well as offering donation support, we’re also exploring ways in which they can support the charity’s training and employment programme, Centrepoint Works, The programme helps young people to turn their lives around by helping them to develop essential life skills and puts them on the path to lasting employment through support to obtain English and Maths qualifications, traineeships, and other learning programmes designed specifically for people looking for work or to progress in their chosen career.
FirstPort harnesses everyone’s efforts – its employees, clients, customers, residents, and contractors – to make a real impact, and has pledged to match any fundraising, pound for pound. Examples of employee involvement include taking part in sponsored cycling challenges and the charity’s annual ‘Sleep Out’ events.
