Our Chosen Charity for February 2022

Each month, we’ll be making a ￡1,000 donation to a charity nominated by one of the YFM team.

Jamie Roberts, Partner and Head of New Investments in the South, explains why he’s chosen to support a Scout event in Northamptonshire

Q????????????What is the event

Scouting is a volunteer run organisation which provides activities for c362,000 young people across the UK, of which there are around 127,000 Beaver Scouts between six and eight years of age.

The money from YFM’s donation will be used to support the ‘Beaver Camp in a Day’ event in Glendon District in Northamptonshire. The day is being organised by volunteer Beaver leaders across Corby and will give around 100 children the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors, spending time with their peers and developing skills for life.?

?Q????????????How have you been involved and why have you chosen to support the charity?

I come from a Scouting family from Glendon District – I started as a Beaver Scout when I was?seven years old and spent 14 years moving through the organisation. It provided me with a huge amount of experience and a skillset that played a big part in making me who I am.

The Beaver Camp in a Day was started by my Mum when she ran the District Beavers in the 1990s, it was “innovative” at the time as Beavers were not allowed to stay over night due to their age – the Camp in a Day gave the Beavers all the experiences they would have had, but without the overnight stay.

Time moved on and the Camp in a Day stopped happening, but the District is keen to restart it – it’s a logistical challenge to get a hundred six to eight year olds in to a field and keep them entertained for a day. YFM providing the funding to do it removes one of those challenges and makes it much more likely to happen.

Q????????????What will YFM’s donation be used for?

All of the adults who organise the event are volunteers so the ￡1,000 should cover most of the cost of putting on the Camp in a Day.

Catriona Eaton, Corby Scout Leader:?“Corby Beaver Scouts have an amazing opportunity, thanks to YFM, to restart our ‘Camp in a day’, a long standing annual event which had been lost due to all the other demands on funding.?We are very grateful for this opportunity for our younger members to try new activities outside of their normal environment, giving them the chance to discover the outdoors in a way they would not normally get to do.?Many of these children will have spent a third of their lives so far in some sort of lock down restrictions and this funding is hopefully going to allow us to create positive childhood memories for them.”?