Impact Report 2017

All of our facilitators:

1. have a unique understanding of schools, young people and school culture
2. can build an instant rapport and trust with audiences
3. can reMain superconscious during deliveries and throughout the whole school visit
4. are fearless and enjoy finding solutions to the challenges young people bring
5. can deal with issues, challenges and problems with a non-confrontational manner
6. can read audiences brilliantly
7. appear relaxed and share great sense of humour
8. are wonderfully open-minded human beings
9. confidently express their own unique individuality
10. are fabulous role models for young people

In order for us to unlock and reach our full potential in life, to be successful and find true happiness, we first need to feel good about ourselves.

We created our 5 outcomes to work closely in sync with schools and the education system to help empower young people to find that hope, to feel more confident and happy about themselves, to build positive relationships and to develop strong skills that employers look for.

Our new surveys now consist of 25 questions that break down into these ‘big 5’ outcomes and here are some of our favourite results from our partner schools…

In August 2016, CoSchool and humanutopia united to bring transformative experiences to young people in Colombia. CoSchool is a Colombian social enterprise that offers programmes to develop social-emotional skills in schools across the country.

The two companies have known each other since 2010.

Lauren and Mohamed journeyed to Colombia taking hu international to facilitate some successful sessions over 3 weeks. through transformative one-day workshops with five different schools, They shared experiences and methodologies to improve the focus of CoSchool. A long-term relationship between the two organisations was founded.

“In 2016 I realised just how similar we were to humanutopia so I tracked down Lauren and others and invited them over here to work with 5 schools and 500 students in August 2016.

The visit was amazing, a huge success, and we are repeating it this year with a view to building a long term partnership between the two organisations. It’s been awesome learning from humanutopia and growing together. Long may it continue. Vamos HUCO!”

Henry May – Co-founder and CEO, Co-School

This time it is Lauren L and Tamara’s turn and a second time back for Lauren M as they work with coschool over the summer 2017. We wish them all the best and can’t wait to hear all about their experience.

We’d like to thank Coschool and indeed the schools of Bogota for having us and may it be a long lasting, continued partnership and adventure that builds on the successes we have already had.

Holy Trinity has become a key primary school partner since we started working with them back in September 2015 on a three year partnership. During that time, we have worked with all students in the school and the staff running our Who Am I?, Who Am I Now, heroes training and 5 live programmes. With our support the school have managed to sustain an effective team of heroes and a buddy mentoring system throughout the school.

This year we have been sustaining the partnership which had culminated in the heroes running a HARmony Camp for the younger students. We are hugely excited about our future partnership and next year they will be our pilot school for our primary partnership programme.

“We needed something to help the children to actually understand each other.  the number of skills that the children have developed now has just been phenomenal”

Lorraine Dolan, Headteacher, Holy Trinity

We would like to especially thank the huge contribution of Capital Hair and Beauty, who have sponsored the camps over the last four years by covering all costs associated with providing thousands of heroes with HARmony camp t-shirts.

Due to Summer school funding being cut this year, many schools were unable to continue with their HARmony camps. We are hugely grateful for Capital Hair and beauty increasing their contribution and donating funds so that we were still able to run 8 HARmony camps this summer whilst supplying all heroes with their revered HARmony camp t-shirts.

“It’s great to be able to support young people and see the positive energy and smiles that comes from the HARmony camps. many young people need that extra BIT OF confidence to move on in life. it’s our pleasure to be able to help facilitate this.”

Hamish Vans Agnew – Co-Director, Capital Hair and Beauty

Our brand new Ongoing Support Programme has had a good first year. We’ve worked with a range of schools across the UK who have successfully implemented a sustainable programme for Heroes to deliver to their younger peers. Katie – our School Partnership Manager has worked closely with Lead Teachers to design a programme that suits all individual schools.

Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey is a Secondary School which is based across two sites on the Isle of Sheppey. They have focused on supporting the wellbeing of their students by taking part in our programme and extending their Heroes work with Year 7. Heroes across both sites have completed 2 brilliant terms of Peer Mentoring and delivered 1:1 Icon sessions with Year 7. Although both teams aren’t necessarily in contact on a daily basis, they support each other through their Lead teacher training and meeting with Heroes on a weekly basis.

Orchard School Bristol are passionate about expanding on their Who am I and Heroes Training. Year 10 Heroes have completed 2 terms of our Peer Mentoring programme with Year 8 students. Year 10’s have a fantastic Lead Hero who supports the Lead Teacher with day-to-day organisation of Heroes and younger students. Heroes have their own Peer Mentoring packs that they collect at the beginning of each session. It allows them to track all meetings and report back to the Lead teacher if necessary. Heroes are recognised by their hu Hero Badges and their Hero Lanyards. The Lanyards are designed to showcase that they are running a Hero Lead activity.

Roundhill Academy have focused on building the school community as well as revisiting our core outcomes and icons with Year 10 Heroes and Year 8 students. Heroes have successfully completed our Peer mentoring programme with Year 8 and continued to work in interactive group Icon sessions throughout Term 5 and 6. Roundhill will continue with a similar model next year with Lead Heroes in each house to ensure consistency throughout.

We are extremely proud of all the schools we’ve worked with, especially those who have committed their time and efforts in sustaining our work. Thank you to everybody for all your hard work and we look forward to working with you next year.

Over the last 6 years we have been embraced by the Social enterprise family and been given the opportunity to interact, learn from and connect with a hugely supportive network.

Since we first met with social enterprise uk,  we have engaged with BiTC arc, Young Foundation accelerator and young academy, BVC 2014 winners and of course a very proud member of SEUK….We now have 21 colleagues 13 of which are former heroes from our flagship leadership and volunteering programme, next academic year a further 3 will be joining us…

1. The journey began with a meeting with Peter Holbrook who gave his time, passion and belief in our organisation at a very difficult time. He also opened our eyes to a new network of like-minded

entrepreneurs but also a world of opportunity especially in terms of organisations looking to support enterprises with growth and business strategy.

“It has been a privilege to watch humanutopia go from strength to strength,

not just in terms of size and scale, but across all aspects of its business and most

importantly in terms of its impact on young people.  This has been a remarkable journey and it’s our pleasure to have played a modest role in helping the team to achieve such brilliant outcomes and fantastic business growth. This is a life-changing initiative and it’s important that even more people have access to it.”

Peter Holbrook, Chief Executive, Social Enterprise UK

2. We applied and gained a place with Business in the community ARC programme, which not only led to some amazing support but also ignited our relationship with BiTC Education.

“humantopia has been with Business in the Community’s arc programme from our early days back in 2012 when we sought to create a social legacy from the hosting of the Olympic Games.  They have delivered time and time again on our ambition and we are so delighted to see this fantastic organisation go from strength to strength.  Long may it prosper and grow.”

Jane Pritchard, Enterprise & Culture Director, Business in the Community

3. We then fought hard to get onto the Young Foundation Accelerator programme, with some excellent support including business strategy and financial coaching from Justin Hughes and Seva Phillips respectively. We also enjoyed working across their network to support other budding social entrepreneurs on their subsequent programmes.

We are so proud to have watched Humanatopia grow in scale and impact since taking part in The Young Foundation’s venture Accelerator Programme in 2012. One of our core areas of focus is educational inequalities so we are delighted that we have helped put Humanatopia on the road to improving thousands of young people’s life chances.Baroness Glenys Thornton, CEO of the Young Foundation young foundation

4. This then led into becoming ‘Big Venture Challenge’ winners in 2014 through Unltd’s flagship investment programme where we were able to secure match funding, with some excellent support from their team and pro-bono support from Hogan Lovells and Intentionality.

The scale of their impact and the way in which they have transformed the lives of thousands of young people is phenomenal. The team were a joy for us to work with and They remain a much valued member of our community of social entrepreneurs. I have no doubt that they will continue to enable young people to fully realise their phenomenal potential and positively develop our education sector.

Mark Norbury, Chief Executive, UnLtd

With all of our #socent associations and incubator experiences over the past few years, there is no doubt that they have collectively supported us with excellent business support, engaged us with hugely powerful connections and networks to help develop our strategy, raise significant investment and deliver social impact at scale.

We would like to thank all the individuals and organisations over the last 6 years who have given us hope, belief and the ability to grow and continue to believe in young people and the impact of humanutopia.

The opportunity to chair the humanutopia youth board has been a real privilege over the last year. The youth board has collectively given us the chance to work together on projects that we feel could benefit the young people we work with, but equally what we feel we could bring to the company to add our own perspective.

One of our biggest accomplishments together was carrying out our first National Heroes summit, co-ordinated independently by the youth board, in which we brought together heroes from 15 different schools from across the country. Alongside this, we have also worked together to create an apprentice manual for new apprentices entering the company, which has allowed us to incorporate a lot more creativity with what we do. As young people, it has given us the chance to connect and share our ideas and also represent what we do at various events and conferences whilst having a greater understanding of our impact and the importance of youth voice.

From a personal perspective, I’ve been really grateful to be able to network and meet with a variety of different people, as well as having been as trusted as we have been to take on a greater level of responsibility which we hope to further develop moving forward.

Youth Friendly Small Employer award winner 2015 and 2016

13 of our 20 employees are former heroes!

Sacha

I wanted to work for humanutopia because i felt like i had a lot to offer, not just the company, but to young people up And down the country because i felt like i could relate to and understand a lot of the problems they were going through in secondary school.

Robina

I had already been through the heroes journey for 5 years at my school and got so much peace from it. so much so that I wanted to reach out to others to know what it felt like to be able to spread that across the country.

Chris

I was fed up of doing jobs THAT I hated; i wanted to do something that i loved, that would allow me to improve as well as hopefully giving the same effect to others through it.

Katie

I wanted to work for a company that cared about the young people they worked with and about their employees too. Being a former hero AND hu lead teacher at my previous job allowed me to guide and support heroes

through school. I wanted to reach out and support as many young people through their heroes journey as possible.

Over the past year, we have worked with a variety of corporate organisations and educational bodies delivering conferences around employability, wellbeing and leadership. It has helped to create A major thrust of experiences bringing young people and adults from the corporate world together in order to bridge the gap.

We’d like to thank all our partners and associations to help make such a difference to the lives of the young people we work with.

“At Business in the Community we want to ensure the young adults we work with have the confidence to build successful lives. Humanutopia’s Bridging the Gap event in Barking and

Dagenham was an inspiring day as we saw the students realising their potential and wanting to succeed in school and beyond.”

Simona Lungu, Education Manager, Business in the Community

Working in partnership with Capital One, we ran a conference inviting over 100 year 9 students to work with over 30 Capital One business employees and associates. with a strong focus on student mental health and wellbeing, the day enabled them to reflect on their behaviour, build confidence and work with Capital employees to develop essential life and workplace skills. By the end of the day, many of the students were able to confidently express themselves, speaking publicly in front of their groups and even the whole room. The day was very successful and we look forward to working with Capital One in the future.

“Capital One UK are proud to work with humanutopia. This year, we supported an event involving 30 of our employees working with over 100 young people from Nottingham schools. Together, we helped these young people to feel more positive about themselves, and understand that a successful work life is a true possibility for their future.”

Dave Richard, Community Relations Manager, Capital One

“MY MENTAL HEALTH REALLY WAS DAMAGED BY WHAT PEOPLE SAID ABOUT ME. AFTER TODAY, IT WILL REALLY HELP BECAUSE I WILL PROBABLY BE ABLE TO BLOCK OUT WHAT THEY SAY…”

HANNAH, YEAR 9