Mark's
Pennine Way Challenge
part of In2Out's 10 year celebrations
This year In2Out are celebrating 10 years of offering hope of a better future to over 750 young people as they left prison and returned to their communities across the north of England. If you already know a little bit about our work you will know what a challenge mentoring these young people is. How do you speak hope into someone's life if up to that point most of what they have experienced is disappointment, loss, betrayal, trauma and perhaps even neglect and abuse? But we know from experience that the journey with these kids is worth the stress and the heartbreak, the disappointment and the setbacks, because of the truly amazing transformation that can happen when they start to recognise their worth and know that they are loved and cared for. In the end, it's all about relationships. It's about showing them in a hundred different ways that they matter, that they have skills and talents and that we believe in something better for them than what has gone before.
So, naturally we want to do more. This year we will start taking referrals from HMYOI Werrington in the Midlands as well as HMYOI Wetherby, but in the coming years we want to reach even more young people leaving different prisons and going back to different places, because each of them deserves a chance to get their life back on track and to be the best version of themselves. And so, we are aiming to raise £50,000 this year to make that goal possible - to give even more young people a chance and hope in their future.
In May, I'm going to hike the 268 miles (431 km) of the Pennine Way from Derbyshire to Scotland over 15 days (I hope), carrying all my stuff and camping along the way - whatever the weather. As well as being long, and possibly quite wet, there is also around 12,000 metres of elevation gain - in case you're wondering, that's almost one and a half times the height of Everest! I'm hoping there'll be less snow and more oxygen.
My aim is to raise £20,000 towards our target, to make sure that more kids have the chance to have an In2Out mentor to walk alongside them on what for many of them is a pretty scary, painful and at times perilous journey. I'm certainly hoping for less of the perilous, but I'm already feeling a bit of the scary and anticipating a lot of the painful.
BLOG
"I can honestly say I wouldn't have got through it without In2Out"
Kris, In2Out Participant
My journey starts on Sunday 12th May in Edale in Derbyshire. It would mean a lot if you'd sign up below to follow my journey and hopefully read and even watch my daily updates. (If nothing else you can use it as a live weather forecast for the Pennines!) In some small way, I hope to use my journey to reflect on and share with you some of the challenges that our young people experience as they face their daily Everests, as well as the triumphs that are possible if they can persevere through. Despite the often huge burdens they carry and all the storms life has thrown at them, we know that having a mentor beside them who believes in them, cheering them on and telling them they matter can make all the difference. It can literally change lives.
£20,000 sounds a lot I know, but I believe there are enough good people out there who understand how important this is, that we'll do it. So, once you've signed up to the blog, please support me via the donate link below or at the top of the page. Share it and the blog link with your friends and allies and let's make a difference together. We can do it, I know we can - together offering hope to some incredibly needy and vulnerable kids like Kris that just need a chance and people who believe in them.
