About Us

History

The Energize charity was created in 1998 to provide sport and educational activities for young people. In 2005 a subsidiary trading company was created to deal with the activities that were starting to generate income to meet the objectives of the charity above.

Ethos

Energize was established as a Christian charity with an emphasis on allowing its actions to do the talking. Its main focus is on bringing hope and purpose to marginalised people.

The primary activity of the charity is distribution of sports equipment to a number of projects with which it has an ongoing relationship. The charity also provides a conduit for gift aid to be collected for donations to a small number of projects that do not have a charity number.

Angling4Success Ethos:

Taking them out of the classroom to keep them in Education

Within the framework of today's mainstream secondary education system, a recurring pattern of underperformance consistently manifests itself amongst a 10-15% segment of young people. In most schools, this marginalised and disaffected group gets lost in the system and yields both poor results for those individuals and impacts negatively on the learning potential of their classroom peers.

Established in 1998, the ethos of Energize is to turn the potential of young people in Bedfordshire & the South East into success. Energize recognises and strongly advocates the need for a parallel provision of experiential learning activities that play directly to the strengths of those young people unable to achieve in the traditional indoor classroom setting.

Energize directly targets these groups, explores other avenues to reinvigorate their personal development and to (re-)awaken their desire to learn. Using an alternative curriculum and a mentoring framework, Energize extends the borders of education outside the classroom in order to keep the targeted young people within the learning process.

The Paradox of Concentration

There exists a paradox that those unable to focus and learn effectively in the classroom can, more often than not, sit for hours on a river bank concentrating intensely and patiently solving the problem of catching fish. This conundrum inspired Energize to use angling as a "hook" for:

• learning new skills
• developing problem solving skills
• learning to be a team player
• growing self-esteem
• tangible self-development

Energize's new ANGLING4SUCCESS outdoor experiential learning programme specifically targets those students, who are underperforming in the classroom. Whether pre-empting a potential exclusion situation or whether providing a structured learning experience for an already excluded  young person, the A4S programme deliberately extends the borders of education outside of the classroom, in order to keep those young people in education. It captures the imagination of the young people and reels them back into the learning process.

A Perpetual Mentoring Framework

While mentoring is provided for the whole group, the young people participating in the A4S programme are encouraged to mentor the younger students and soon enjoy the achievement and increased confidence of passing on their wisdom. This initiates a perpetual framework of mentoring and a small number of candidates who show a particular promise in learning and passing on skills to others, will be offered the chance to return to mentor future projects.

Trustees

Energize has 7 trustees (listed below):