February 2010: The Source Cafe, Aldershot
With Natalie Cooper, The Source Cafe coordinator.
The Source started in 2000 as the vision of Jo Emmett, who worked with homeless and disaffected young people in Aldershot.
Working with local churches and statutory and voluntary organizations, The Source became established as a youth café, offering a safe space free from drugs and alcohol, for young people to meet and feel part of. The Source moved into its new, fully-equipped, premises in 2007 with support from the local borough council, and worked with more tha 650 young people over the last year.
The centre mainly helps 10-25 year olds who have problems at school or with authority, or who have family-related issues which have lead to them living alone or becoming homeless, but it is open to all young people in the area. Working from a Christian faith-based vision, The Source aims to create a positive environment where young people can feel empowered and trusted, and able to form relationships with each other and with mentors so that they can grow spiritually and personally and change their lives.
A key part of this comes from training young people to take responsibility for key roles, such as helping to run and manage the café or the after-school club for younger children. Natalie explains why this is important: “It’s very much about family and relationships. We’re spending a lot of time getting to know young people, building relationships with them so that they can hopefully be in a position where they can volunteer at the end of it… So it means they’ve got this three-hour period every week when it’s not about them, it’s thinking about other people. I feel that’s setting them up in a positive way to moving on to employment. I want to see them moving forward and making better choices.”
The Source has developed its youth work and now also runs an anger management course, mentoring for young mums, a football club and R.E.A.L., a programme exploring spirituality and faith. At the core of all of the centre’s work is a non-judgmental approach to youth work, and an aim to help young people develop to their fullest potential, freed from barriers and difficulties.
Church Urban Fund has recently awarded The Source a grant towards its core costs, which has helped it to secure matched funding from other sources. Natalie explained that getting funding from a Christian organization was especially important: “It just felt really positive being able to apply to Christian funders; knowing CUF would support our faith aspect, rather than [it] being something that is shunned.”
