Meet Chloe, Alexandra and Harriet – they’ve been with us as interns for a month and they’ve been great

We’ve just said thank you and goodbye to three university students who have spent the past month supporting the women who use our drop-in service.

This service is the heart of everything we do here and our interns – Alexandra Danellakis, Chloe Appleby and Harriet Trotter – have done a wonderful job of helping us run it over the past four weeks.

Among other things, women come here to get a shower, do their laundry, pick up a change of clothes and get a freshly cooked hot meal – as well as finding other essentials to take away with them, including food , condoms and toiletries.

Also, some of our homeless clients use it as a place to safely catch up on their sleep instead of exposing themselves to the multiple risks of sleeping rough.

Crucially, the time clients spend here helps us get to know them and work out what we can do to best help them.

Just as important is the good company they find here – and Chloe, Alexandra and Harriet excelled here.

They agreed their internship has been eye-opening, occasionally emotionally wearing and ultimately valuable to their studies and future career choices.

All three said they had seen stark evidence of the violence faced by so many of the women who use our drop-in service.

Our interns (left to right): Alexandra, Chloe and Harriet.

Alexandra, a 21-year-old psychology undergraduate at The University of Leicester, added: “The time here has gone by so quickly. I have loved it here.

“It’s a shame it was only a four-week internship, so that’s why I’ve asked about volunteering here in the future.

“I lived on the same road as The New Futures Project so I’d seen the building many times but I had no idea what it was all about and what it did.

“These women are some of the sweetest and strongest people I will ever meet.

“So many of them them have told me this place is a life-saver, that they had given up but coming here has given them hope for the future.

“I told my gran I was working here and explained what it does and she came back with eight bags of clothing from her church.

“People need to know more about what New Futures does. 

“I know it’s always looking for help and funding and that makes me angry when the government and companies that are making millions of pounds could do so much more to help it and others like it.

“I hate the idea of the women who come here thinking that nobody apart from the people at the project care about them.”

Chloe is a first year criminology student at Leicester’s De Montfort University. Ultimately, the 19-year-old  intends to join the police and work in criminal investigation.

“There are women I’ve met here who I will think about after I’ve left and there have been days where a client played on my mind because we hadn’t seen her for a while and you’re left thinking ‘I hope she’s okay’, she said.

“Coming to New Futures has been amazing, personally and professionally. These women are so resilient.

“People come out of university with a degree but not everyone will have had work experience as valuable as we’ve had.

“I want to be a detective and the time I have been here has been really helpful because it’s helped my communication skills and given me an insight into the women’s lives and what needs to be done to help them.”

Our third intern 20-year-old Harriet Potter,  a second-year psychology and neuroscience student at the University of Leicester, added: “The university sent out an email saying ‘you can be a citizen of change’. 

“I’ve always wanted to do something to help women in some way. I researched New Futures and I realised it does really important work.

“I come from a town where I never saw signs of poverty or homelessness, so I was probably a bit naive when I came here.

“I have learned so much. If I told some of the people at home about some of the things I’ve seen and heard they probably wouldn’t believe me.

“The women who come here know people at New Futures really care about them and have their best interests at heart.”

Lisa Swann-Davie, our drop-in service manager, said: “All three of the interns have been a vital part of the service for the past four weeks.

“They have all been wonderful and it has been lovely to watch them develop and care about the people we support here.

“I hope that we, and our amazing service-users, have been able to teach them skills that they will take forward into their future careers.”

The New Futures Project was set up more than 20 years ago to support women involved in sex work.

However, we have evolved into a comprehensive welfare and counselling service for women and young people dealing with sexual abuse or exploitation, domestic violence, trafficking, poverty and debt, substance use or mental ill-health.

Call us on 0116 251 0803 or send us a message at: info@new-futures.org.uk

You can find us at 71 London Road, Leicester, LE2 0PE.

We publish a monthly newsletter to tell the stories of the women we support and to round up all the things we’ve been doing. 

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