One of the easiest – and most poignant – ways you could support The New Futures project’s life-changing work

Earlier this month, we announced our plan to approach the area’s leading businesses to ask them to come up with ways of supporting us in, literally, any way they can come up with.

We’ve never attempted a fundraising campaign on this scale before and last week we issued a press release which set out a broad range of ideas businesses might consider adopting.

Here, we focus on one particular method of becoming an ally to us and the hundreds of women and young people we help – a basic form of sponsorship.

Counselling is at the heart of what we do here at The New Futures Project and it is no exaggeration to assert this therapeutic work can be life-changing, occasionally life-saving.

Our counsellors work in cosy and inviting private rooms, each named after a woman whom we supported but later lost in tragic circumstances.

A plaque on each door commemorates these women and we will never forget them.

Our director, Della Kagure Brown says: “We have seven counselling rooms.

“If we could find seven companies or even individuals to sponsor a room for £5,000 a year that would give us £35,000 which would mean we could support many more traumatised women to live happier lives.”

Each sponsor could choose to have their name on a plaque on their sponsored room’s door, under the woman’s name.

Della says: “They would be paying for 20 women to have a counselling session every week for a year.”

This form of sponsorship could also work on a smaller, but no less important, scale and still be a critically important source of regular income for us.

Last year, we took our first steps as a provider of counselling training.

Our Level Two Counselling Skills course – which is accredited by the Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body, (CPCAB) – equips participants with skills they’ll be able to bring to bear in their professional and personal lives.

Perhaps, some business leaders would appreciate the benefits of paying for their employees to go on the course.

However, they could also consider  supporting us by sponsoring a training chair.

An annual donation of, say, £500 or £1,000 would sponsor a training chair and enable women to train for a new career as a counsellor.

The New Futures Project supports approximately 700 women and young people in the course of a year.

We could do so much more if we had the resources – and that is why we are contacting hundreds of the largest and most prestigious companies across the city and county to ask for any support they can provide – in whatever form that takes.

We can provide plenty of suggestions but we’re more than happy to hear their ideas too.

New Futures 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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