BY HANNAH BARR Another year and another cohort of young people have completed ‘Find your fire’, Doorsteps’ ten-month programme for helping young people at risk of disengaging identify what they are good at, what they feel passionately about, to attach value to those things, and help them look at ways of developing in them. Sarah …
In their busy lives, Christian youth workers are often more responsive rather than reflective, and don’t always have the opportunities to stop, share, plan and pray. One of the aims of Doorsteps, Viva’s partner network based in Oxford, is to provide this space. We are identifying a greater collaboration between youth projects, and currently have …
BY HANNAH BARR Around 90 people who attended Doorsteps’ mental health conference last month have returned to their communities informed and supported about the subject and empowered to make a difference. The event at St Andrew’s Church, north Oxford, entitled ‘A Christian Response to Child and Adolescent Mental Health’, drew participants from across Oxfordshire, and …
BY HANNAH BARR This is Mental Health Awareness Week (14-20 May), with the NSPCC revealing that schools in England made almost 125,000 referrals for specialist help since 2014, with more than half of these coming from primary schools. Across the age spectrum, the stats on mental health struggles look bleak. Last week, British universities said they …
BY HANNAH WOODS I feel passionately about parents having confidence in the choices they make around keeping their children safe, and parents and young people being able to make informed choices they make to keep their children safe. I’m sharing here tips I’ve trialled both as a parent and a youth worker. I’ve also gathered …
BY HANNAH BARR We might think that the gap between the sacred and the secular in a Western context has increasingly become a chasm. And yet, you don’t have to search too far to discover that the ways the sacred – something of who God is – permeates the world around us. The writer Leonard …
“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this” is a well-known quote from the classic 1986 Nintendo video game ‘The Legend of Zelda’. Find out why Hannah Woods recalled the phrase as she reflected on a growing schools’ work with which Viva’s partner network Doorsteps is involved. I’ve done youth work in East Oxford for 12 …
On ‘Blue Monday’, Hannah Barr writes about why good mental health is feeling the full range of emotions – even sad ones – and how Viva’s programme in Oxford is giving young people the space to reflect on their feelings and get support if they need it. We can learn a lot from a girl called Riley… …
BY HANNAH BARR What was your first experience of the internet? I don’t know if this was my first experience, but I remember being about nine or ten and having to do a school project on a European city and searching the web for everything it could tell me about Amsterdam. I proudly presented my …
BY HANNAH BARR Christmas is increasingly associated with stress and striving, the overwhelming desire to have a celebration that is Instagram-ready. An artsy Christmas card featuring the whole family in matching festive pyjamas? A dinner spread to rival Nigella? And the presents under the tree to materially express your love for them? I like joy …