Lion President Richard Hill recently attended an EMBER skate board session and presented them with a cheque for £356 to purchase equipment.
EMBER is a youth organisation in North Tonbridge that aims to improve the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health of the young people in and around Tonbridge. This takes many different forms, and the focus is very much aimed at those who are living in deprivation, those that have experienced trauma, those struggling with mental health, or those caught up in the justice system.
The overall mission to be able to open a youth centre that houses a safe space for young people to socialise, an indoor skate park, a café of some sort and rooms that can facilitate peer support groups, homework help sessions, one-to-one mentoring, specialist meetings required by young people. They just want it to be an overall space that can meet the needs of young people and their families.
Currently this need is met by offering youth groups, detached youth work, one-to-one mentoring within schools, family support and advocacy with social services, the police, or schools, and then with skateboarding lessons which are partially funded by Tonbridge Lions and by charging those that can afford the lessons to cover the costs of our other services.
The business model in the long run is to even the ground between those in poverty and those who are financially comfortable.
