Why not give a little Hope this Christmas?: The Tope Project

This Christmas Day I am volunteering with The Tope Project, a volunteer-led initiative for unsupported care-leavers between the ages of 16 and 24.

I can vividly recall the ten or eleven weeks back when Sally Bartolo approached me at a youth enterprise event to promote The Tope Project. In a nutshell, she explained, the project would facilitate a day of celebration for 70 care-leavers in a church on Christmas Day. This particular day though, she was recruiting volunteers to make the event possible.

I hadn’t known a particularly great deal of the Care experience prior to the invitation, and in fact, ‘care-leavers’ at the time was something alien to my vocabulary, if honest. It’s all very apt; I’d never given thought to what may happen after to those who had been through care and come of age. In fact, rather conveniently, I had spent much of the last few years trying to figure out my own predicaments that came with coming-of-age, as it were, which seemed central enough.

 I look to my own situation which I guess most would refer to as somewhat regular: School, college, university. A degree and a bunch of debt later, I would find myself in the wilderness pondering next steps. Questions spiralled: What career do I want? How do I get my foot on the ladder? So many questions yet such little sense of direction. Yet all said and done, I was fortunate enough to have a supportive family network behind me until I was firmly level, and placed in my current youth mentor role with education charity City Year.

For care leavers, the end of the road as far a support is concerned is 18 should they not be in further education. Here on, life begins as an independent as support once provided by social services, is withdrawn. In short, this lackadaisical approach to an already vulnerable youth only diminishes the chances of these youngsters before they have even begun, and tragic statistics are only waiting to be created, inevitably.

In fact, the sombre reality is that one such tragedy has sparked this project. Tope, a 23 year old care-leaver took his own life back in 2010, to the shock and confusion of friends. Confusion, not just emanating from the youngster’s untimely demise, but from failing to understand why an apparently content young man felt it necessary to consider suicide. Tope’s story alone hints at the ramifications of what can occur when we deny basic human regard and consideration. 

Surely though, don’t we have a sense of duty as a moral society to resist such realities? Fortunately, out of the depths of such tragic circumstances The Tope Project takes a vital first step towards addressing this question in the positive. And indeed Christmas Day is a great start. This family-orientated celebration creates something of a Marmite dichotomy. You are either a part of the family celebrations, or you are not. All too often for the marginalised folks like those who have left care, it is the latter.  The reality is that the perception of such at a time when it seems that the rest of the world is at a party, can have such dire consequences as that above. And this is what makes the project imperative to run on Christmas day.

The Christmas narrative derives from a story of despair to hope.  For me personally, this is often lost amongst the materialism that the yuletide has accrued over the years. In glorious echoes of the Christmas story though, the Tope Project sets about to call on this essential transition of negative to positive; tragedy to celebration; and above all the transition from despair to hope. Hope for youngsters that will be able to share stories with others with common experiences on the day. Hope for care-leavers that will be able to realise that there are others who do care, even if this doesn’t appear the case. And furthermore, hope that those deemed ‘problem’ often hold the keys to their own solutions. Such is exactly what the project will foster; resilience, self-respect and a boost of self-worth for use far beyond the day.

Quite simply, this December 25th, The Tope Project will be rewriting the script of many marginalised youngsters’ Xmas, for the better. With the project a brainchild of Shalyce Lawrence, Sally Bartolo and Jerome Harvey- youngsters themselves  who have shared experience of the care system - this is surely youth enterprise at its very best.

This transition to adulthood, nobody should enter inadequately. Support attachments are crucial, and have been proven are indispensable to future success. Equally a lack of support has been proven to correlate with more dire long-term outcomes. The stats speak for themselves; a significant number of care-leavers will enter a life of crime or homelessness, eventually.

All in all though, this Christmas, through its volunteers and benefactors, The Tope Project, to me, creates the perfect antidote to such a harsh reality, proving what alternatives can be achieved when we come together to spare a little thought, consideration and care. Raising a much needed awareness for some of London’s highest at-risk young people, this is a compelling demonstration that we are all interconnected, and does wonders to encourage hope,  for at least someone out there truly still cares.



Please visit http://www.justgiving.com/TheTopeProject-2013 , and give whatever you can. All donations can, and will, continue to make a change for several vulnerable young people.