This summer PEF hosted its first Awards Dinner. Thanks to your incredible generosity it was a resounding success, raising a further £500,000 for disadvantaged children and young people. It also gave us the opportunity to show how powerful your support can be in changing lives.

During the evening we heard about Codie who suffered from cripplingly low self-esteem, unsurprising given her Mum’s substance misuse which meant that she’d been the one looking after her Mum since she was small. Codie’s lifeline came from the NSPCC’s Warrington Young People’s Centre (funded by PEF). It built her confidence to such an extent that she now volunteers to lead groups of young people in outdoor activities.

Then there was Millie who joined PEF charity Tomorrow’s People to overcome her drink and drugs problem and to stay out of trouble with the police but who has achieved so much more. With GCSEs and A Levels under her belt she now plans to become a psychologist, volunteers to help young people in care and sits on a panel for potential foster carers. Yet, without PEF’s investment the charity wouldn’t have been able to raise additional funding to sustain the programme in Plymouth which Millie attended.

These young people were just two of the finalists in our Young Person’s Full Potential Award but are indicative of the incredible adversity that the nominees had overcome to become exceptional young adults. What is humbling is that despite, and perhaps because of, what each has been through they have all chosen a new path; to help others in the same position.

And that’s the key. Each young person began to turn their life around when given the opportunity to give something back. Even though their situation was bad it was only when they realised that others had it even worse and that they could help, that they began to help themselves.

It’s a harsh reality that without you and the interventions you support PEF to scale up, Codie and Millie, and thousands more children and young people like them, would be facing a very different future. They might never have been given the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Thank you and best wishes,

Shaks

Shaks Ghosh, Chief Executive, Private Equity Foundation