Empowering young people to thrive

We spoke to Basecamp Adventure Trust, who empower young people to thrive, about how they do that and their grant from Flint Family Fund… 

Can you tell us a bit about Basecamp Adventure Trust? 

Basecamp is a new charity established in 2021 to support young people from Leeds to thrive. We deliver year-long programmes which blend outdoor adventure, personal development and compassionate coaching to support young people to improve their wellbeing and learn skills for life. Through highly challenging adventures and high support from Basecamp Coaches, young people stretch themselves out of their comfort zone to discover all they are innately capable of. In awe-inspiring and immersive green spaces across the Lake District, young people can experience different environments, broaden their horizons, and discover new possibilities for themselves. 

  

What has funding from Flint Family Fund enabled you to do? 

Funding from the Flint Family Fund provided us with huge support towards the delivery of our Core Programme, which is our main programme supporting 12-13 year olds. Across the year, we delivered six modules, each focused on a specific personal development theme such as ‘resilience for real life’, introducing the theme through a skills workshop before these lessons are brought to life through exhilarating adventure residentials two weeks later. Across the year as young people kayaked across lakes and summitted mountains, they built resilience, developed long-lasting connections with each other and discovered new strengths and talents. 

Funding from the Flint Family Fund was also particularly crucial to our wider fundraising journey, as it was one of the first grants we received in 2024. Such substantial support gave us a boost in confidence to take a bold leap of faith and double the delivery of the next programme to support 60 young people, which we are currently halfway through. 

  

Can you tell us about the impact of what you do on the people you work with? 

We’re really proud to work so closely with young people, and provide individualised support which results in such a diverse range of impact based on each child’s individual needs. At the end of the programme, one parent told us: 

“I could not be more grateful to the Basecamp Team for giving J the opportunity to be a part of something that turned out to be truly amazing! It came at a time when things were not going well for us as family due to multiple family bereavements, followed by the loss of his teacher which is something no young adult should have to go through. The school was amazing helping with grief counselling and being understanding and then J was offered a place on the Basecamp programme, BEST THING EVER!!! 

J was totally out of his comfort zone but with the support of the Basecamp team he pushed all his fears and discomforts to one side and had a truly amazing experience doing all the tasks, they helped bring him back to his happy self and gave him a new found sense of confidence, and had him doing things I never thought I would see him do! He looked forward to each trip and would be packed and ready to go days before, in fact it’s the only time he ever got out of bed on time so not to be late. 

I am truly grateful to the effort put in by all the Basecamp team. Honestly it’s an amazing programme and I don’t know what would have happened to J if he hadn’t attended it, thankfully I don’t have to worry as he did and like I said he truly loved every minute of it, J’s comfort zone is sat in front of a computer so you actually worked a miracle getting him to do all he did. I really hope all the other schools support this programme as it just might be the difference needed in some kids lives to determine their future paths!” 

  

What are some of the biggest challenges you face as an organisation?  

Naturally, a lot of our challenges are shared among charities across Leeds. We face the constant need to ensure we have enough internal capacity and time to sustain core funding which is essential to delivering high quality programmes. As funding becomes in higher and higher demand, the challenge grows to secure all the costs we need to deliver our programmes. We are a young charity and the past 3 years have been a whirlwind as we’ve developed programmes, made mistakes, learnt endless amounts and evolved immeasurably. Now we have our feet on the ground in terms of delivery and fundraising, it becomes more crucial to turn our attention to the next 3-years, specifically our plans to increase financial sustainability and build capacity which will enable us to reach out to different like-minded organisations to co-create bespoke programmes, all whilst never losing sight of our core mission – to deliver long-term, individualised and transformative programmes to young people. 

  

How is your organisation preparing for the future, and what kind of funding is needed? 

It’s so important that we keep attention on our vision as well as the day to day running of the charity. We hope this is just the start of Basecamp and we have so many ideas that we’d love to pursue one day. Last year, one of our Founders Emily stepped into a new role as Head of Programmes and Development and will take the lead with developing new programmes, seeking new partners and steering our creative vision. This new role will set us up to turn these ideas into reality! 

Multi-year funding partnerships, especially those which support core costs, have become crucial to our operations and provide us with a real sense of security in these early years. We’re a relational organisation and it makes such a difference to be able to build long-term relationships where funding partners really understand who we are, what we do, and where we want to go in the future.