Growing from childhood to adolescence is hard. And the pressures of modern life is making it harder. Harder for girls than for boys, some would say.
Four hundred girls from across the East Midlands of England are being helped by the charity Love4Life, which has teams working remotely in Leicester, Loughborough and Derby. The help comes from teams led by a youth worker, who acts as co-ordinator, with sessional workers and volunteers. All team members have been checked by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
The charity’s fundraiser Joanna Burrows, a member of Leicester Rotary Club, brought Lara Best, who joined Love4Life in April, to a meeting of Leicester Novus to give an update on the charity’s progress since Olympic-standard runner Amy Allcock told Novus in May 2022 about its history.
Tragically, at that time, the charity’s CEO Aimi McCaffery was killed in a road traffic collision while jogging near her Nottinghamshire home. Coincidentally, a man appeared in court in relation to the incident on the day that Joanna and Lara visited Novus.
They explained that the charity had appointed Louise Adams as CEO and that with COVID restrictions behind us, the charity had made other changes. Originally called Twenty-Twenty with the motto “Empowering Young People to Make Positive Choices” to Love4Life with the vision statement “A world where every young person knows there with and is empowered to build a life they love.”
Joanna said that the clients, aged 11-19, are helped cope with challenging situations around sex, body image, social media, the need to belong to an in-group, bullying and social anxiety. She said that in some cases Love4Life team members might meet girls at the school gates to walk them home so they avoid some of the risks, including being coerced into joining County Lines drug gangs. She explained that family breakdowns can have awful impacts on girls.
Novus members were extremely saddened to hear some of the case histories that Joanna outlined.
With help from several major charities and fundraising events, Love4Life is extending its reach into schools where girls can be helped on a one-to-one basis or in groups. New schemes are to be set up in Coalville, (where Lara addressed the town’s Rotary Club) and other venues in Leicester and Leicestershire.
Newly-appointed fundraiser Lara has already started to pull money in to help the charity. A fan of quizzes, she has organised a quiz to be held on Wednesday, September 27, at Shoe Zone on the Haramead Business Park off Humberstone Road in Leicester.
To learn more about Love4Life, please follow this link https://love4life.charity/
Last edited 09:10 on Monday, 24/07/2023
