Creating Opportunities and Inspiring Others

Creating opportunities for people to reach their full potential is hugely important to me & to the team I am building at The Secret Event Service. I come from a town that was left behind when the mines closed. When I was growing up, aspiring to be a leader, to grow your own business, to build a brighter future was not something that my school peers seemed to know about. I don’t think this was because of an innate lack of ambition but more of a lack of awareness of the opportunities. 

Life is hard for a lot of people; often things aren’t simple & complications mean that people are scared to take risks for fear of what will come. This leads to people accepting a life that is less than what they deserve. 

In my spare time, I am heavily involved in a charity called HCPT. HCPT takes disabled and disadvantaged children on life changing holidays to Lourdes in France. We build children’s confidence, support them in their emotional wellbeing, show them what life is like beyond the bounds of where they’re from.  We take around 1000 children each Easter on these trips, flanked by 4000+ volunteers (like me) who take time out of their daily lives to make sure these children are happy and thriving. I have been involved in HCPT for over 8 years now, and am now the group leader for the Barnsley group (group 218). We’re a pretty new group who are helping children primarily from Barnsley, where 1 in 4 kids live in poverty. We spend our weekends picking suitable children, meeting them and their families, planning the trip and most importantly fundraising the fares so that the children don’t have to pay anything to go. 

Additionally, I have recently been appointed to the board of the Leeds branch of the amazing Smart Works charity. We help to get women back into work after periods of unemployment through clothing drives and mentorship. This is hugely valuable work as it leads to women being more confident, realising and grabbing hold of their future & building our economy. As a board member, I offer my event skills and knowledge to support in raising awareness and growing funds to ensure that this work can be completed.

Beyond these two amazing charities, I’m proud to say that The Secret Event Service has been a Silver Sponsor of Barnsley Youth Choir for the last year. If you haven’t already, listen to this choir, they are incredible, and much like the work I am doing with HCPT in Barnsley, this choir are also helping children who really need it to become more confident, more aspirational, and more excited about what the future holds! 

I’m proud and pleased to say that SES works with a selection of charities all dedicated to increasing confidence, raising aspirations and enabling people to make the most of their lives and long will that continue. 

To further support this work, from now on, all of our free to attend events will have an opportunity to donate to both HCPT and Smart Works. We would be grateful for any support that our business community will give us in enabling this work to go further. 

Thank you, 

Kate