Mary’s Youth Club is struggling to meet the needs of young people. We have an excellent team of youth workers, volunteers and supporters all working together to provide fun activities all year round. For many young people, this is exactly what they need, but for an increasing number, it’s clearly not enough. Our Youth Club is seeing more young people with multiple, complex issues than ever before.

So, late last year Mary’s employed a youth worker with years of experience and a high level of skills in supporting young people with challenging behaviour. These young people are more likely to be excluded from school and become involved in knife crime, drug dealing (county lines) and suffer exploitation by violent gangs.

Due to the reduced funding and extra pressures on our resources, we aren’t able to extend our worker's contract with us as we had hoped. This means that currently, in early May, we will lose their talent and expertise. This will be a detriment to the young people in Mary’s that they've been supporting.

We are asking for a donation to keep our youth worker employed with us to continue to build on the progress so far and continue this much-needed work. It costs Mary’s a little over £10,000 per year.

We would greatly appreciate your financial support at this time as well as helping us to champion the needs of disadvantaged young people.

Don't forget that if you are a UK taxpayer and you can GIFT AID, we can get 25p for every £1 you give.