Local families step out in Race for Life

A group of staff and families from Stepping Stones took part in the ‘Race for Life’ at Holyrood Park on  Sunday 16 June.

steppingStones

Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life is a series of 5k or 10k women-only fundraising events, which are raising money for research to help beat all 200 types of cancer sooner.

If you missed the June event, don’t worry – there’s another one coming up on Saturday 26  October in Holyrood Park. The twilight Race for Life starts at 7pm.

For further information or to register go to http://raceforlife.cancerresearchuk.org

Stepping Stones annual general meeting

Stepping Stones (North Edinburgh) will be holding their AGM on Thursday 20 September at 12.30pm in Royston Wardieburn Community Centre, Pilton Drive North. All welcome.

Stepping Stones is one of North Edinburgh’s longest established and most succesful community-led organisations, and has worked with young parents (up to 25) and pregnant teenagers from across the Greater Pilton Area of Edinburgh since 1986.

Stepping Stones provides structured but flexible support to young parent families and pregnant teenagers, providing centres where parents can relax, enjoy themselves and their children. The varied group work programmes include leisure recreational and educational activities and is designed to offer a wide range of learning opportunities to the family.

Individual support is also available to complement the group work sessions. Individual support includes counselling, help with parenting, play therapy, relationship advice, career and training advice, housing and debt management, etc. A designated worker provides individual and group support to very young pregnant teenagers.

For further information about Stepping Stones (North Edinburgh) telephone 551 1632, email ststnorthed@hotmail.com or visit their website at www.steppingstonesnorthedinburgh.co.uk  Then again, you could find out all the latest Stepping Stones news by attending the AGM!

 

Telford students – building and supporting local community projects

As part of a new course development at Edinburgh’s Telford College, Career Option Joinery and Painting and Decorating students have been carrying out citizenship projects in the local community by carrying out work for charitable organisations. Recent projects have included building and designing bespoke units and cabinets to create a health information library at Pilton Community Health Project and refitting office space, creating storage and building additional worktops to create an area for staff and clients to work together at Stepping Stones Project. The students have also built a fence at North Edinburgh Childcare to create a safe area for the children to play in. The work carried out by students has complemented their course work by providing learners with on the job experience and helping build key essential skills.

Feedback from projects has been extremely positive. Stepping Stones manager Marilyn Keilloh said: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank Emma, Colin and all the students who have done such great work for us in the last few weeks. Our new desk space and storage facilities will make a very real difference to how we work in the office. They have also been very accommodating, and have come up with some really innovative ideas to solve some of our space problems. As a small project with a very limited budget it has been a great help to us to get this work done. Also, we provide support services to very young parent families and pregnant teenagers so it is good that your students are able to help a project which supports people from their own age group. I would be really grateful if you could pass on my thanks from everyone here at Stepping Stones.”

The students themselves felt they gained new skills and experience by participating in the community projects. Dale Horribine, Career Option Joinery, said: “I think our class worked really well as part of a team in the projects. I would like to do more of these types of projects; it gives us the opportunity to gain new skills and to put our skills into practice in and around the community. It was the perfect work experience.”

Telford’s Head of Construction Sharon McCue-Livingstone fully supports the initiative within the department and now hopes that this can be extended to all areas of Construction within the college. “This is exactly the type of project that enhances what we believe is core to students’ experience, that of real working environment. My hope is to enhance and extend this activity as much as possible into all areas of Construction to provide essential employability skills for our students.”

Edinburgh’s Telford College are keen to become involved in more citizenship projects for charitable organisations in the future. If you think our students could work with your organisation please contact Keith Swann via keith.swann@ed-coll.ac.uk or Sharon McCue-Livingstone (Head) on sharon.mccue-livingstone@ed-coll.ac.uk