Directors Chair with Operations Director – Graham Gill,

Growing your own

You’ve probably seen The Door’s strapline “Unlocking potential, opening opportunity”.  So it’s not surprising that one of the things that give us the greatest satisfaction is seeing young people fulfilling that potential.

In the last few months we’ve recruited into three of our key youthworker positions, advertised around the country to fill them, and recruited an amazing team, that have all come from… Stroud.  Each of them has a real ‘Door Story’. 

Jon Coysh volunteered at The Door as a teenager, went off to do a youthwork degree and worked in Bristol, and is now back with us.  Leah Butt, our Stroud Community Youthworker, was a regular attendee as a young person at our Stroud youth centre who we took on as a Sessional Youthworker.  She did so well we promoted her, and she’s now doing even better (you should have seen her organising those summer trips!).

And with John Williams moving on at the end of September, our new Community Youthwork Coordinator in Stroud, Stonehouse and Avening is Isak Sandgren-Clarke, whose first contact with The Door was as a contestant in the Undiscovered Youth talent contest six years ago.  We took him on as a Sessional Youthworker last year, since then he’s become a real asset to The Door earning a very well-deserved promotion earlier this month.

Youthwork certainly isn’t the best paid career or the easiest to sustain – you can’t make a living out of a handful of youth club sessions a week – so staff turnover in the sector is very high, but we will always keep mentoring, nurturing and investing in our staff and volunteers to help them to progress and maybe move on. 

So when they can and do stay, and we enjoy the fruits of their labours and in turn see them mentoring, nurturing and investing in the next generation, it is an enormous blessing – and an amazing privilege.

—————————————————————————————————————

Find out about starting your Door Story by volunteering at The Door today – click here to find out more

Growing your own

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *