The Duke of York’s Community Initiative: presentation at the Mansion House
Katy Turner, the Voluntary, Community and Faith Sector Coordinator for Doncaster Council, invited the Cascade Foundation to give a presentation for The Duke of York’s Community Initiative at the Mansion House with community groups within the area.
In 2017 we won this award by writing the top social fund bid for the Efficiency North grant. This automatically put us through to the Duke York’s Community Initiative. We were then judged by two board members who visited the Cascade Hub, speaking to our learners, trustees and two of our contract holders.
After winning, we had a day at Sheffield Cathedral where we met the Duke of York along with 59 other community groups. It was such an honour and we were very proud to take two of our learners; it was just a joy to see them laughing and taking to Prince Andrew.
This event at the Mansion House was to talk about our experience of the process and the wonderful day we had meeting the Duke of York with a view to engaging other community groups to go for this award.
We had 15 learners turn up to share their stories about the work that took place at the Cascade Hub. Our founder Jackie spoke for 45 minutes about how the charity has developed and grown from prisons, job centres, special units and the first prototype Cascade Hub, within a six year period.
Malcolm was the first to speak about his life before Cascade. He talked about how he could not read or write and how his learning has given him the confidence to stand up and speak. Jean, Dean, David and Roisin also spoke with so much passion and love for the different way of learning and how all of their lives have changed.
Our new project ‘Who Cares if you have an invisible disability?’ is now being rolled out into the community, and our learners are helping to deliver this project. With the knowledge and understanding of their disability, they will be cascading the learning into different areas of Doncaster.
To have 15 learners show up and support us was just great. They were able to share their knowledge with people they have never meet before and that was wonderful to watch. Seeing how far they have travelled on their journey of learning and self-esteem is extremely rewarding.
