Hear from our participants…
Lydia:
Lydia took part on a Grit community programme in 2002.
Lydia spent much of her early life in west London living with her grandad. Her mum, an alcoholic and drug addict, was continually in and out of prison. When Lydia turned 11 her mum found a place in a hostel and were finally able to share a home….
It was around this time that Lydia was stabbed for the first time. They managed to carry on together for a while but then Mum first had an accident and, after, went missing. Now, at the age of 15, Lydia was homeless, sofa surfing with friends and family. Life was falling apart and she was terrified of ending up like her mum.
It was then that Lydia came across Grit.
Simon:
“The first thing I tell other businesses about Grit,” says Octopus Group CEO, Simon Rogerson, “is, ‘Get involved! Just go and see it.
It is a genuinely brilliant experience – eye-opening on loads of levels and as powerful for professionals as it is for the young people.”
From the off, Grit and Octopus really clicked. Simon is proud of how all Octopus staff embody the values so important to the business - bold, helpful, straightforward – and he soon saw in Grit that very same authenticity, how the values and actions of everybody at Grit embody the work it does. “In Grit I see the passion, the commitment, a can-do mindset … this is critical for us at Octopus.”
Mark
Mark is a teacher and school leader who took part in a Grit schools programme.
I first came across Grit when I saw the Channel 4 programme about Ballet Hoo where marginalised young people from the West Midlands performed with the Birmingham Royal Ballet. I had been teaching a while and just moved into a school leadership role. I remember thinking, “This is extraordinary stuff….” and I thought the programme had the potential to make a real difference in my school. Within a couple of months I was taking part in one of Grit’s Coaching for Success programmes at John Taylor High in Staffordshire.
We had some difficult kids, with a few who were totally disengaged, and the old-fashioned approach to discipline just wasn’t working. Grit turned them around. Grit gave us the focus, the structure to help the students to have real conversations about themselves, their lives and their ambitions for school. For these kids behaviour was transformed and grades improved. The ‘no hopers’ who went on to university; the cheekiest, rudest, most disrespectful girl who one day turned to me and said “Sir, I get it” and went on to get a full set of GCSEs; and the kids who got college and sixth form places against the odds.
Jo
Jo took part in a Grit course at the University of Westminster in 2019.
As an international student, it had only been a month or two since Jo had arrived. Studying in London had been his dream but hadn’t bargained on how different it would be from home. English was difficult, it was so hard to speak with people, so hard to fit in. The clothes he wore, the food he ate, the music he heard, it was all so strange and unfamiliar.
He was living in the suburbs with a friend of a friend of friend. He felt isolated, everyday trekking into the university library to study and then coming home again, speaking to no-one.
It was lonely with only himself for company.
Jo lost all his confidence. Photography was a key part of the course and he knew he was good at taking pictures, but he was too scared to go out and take any.
Then he discovered Grit.
At the Grit workshop, Jo was never allowed to sit alone: there was always someone coming over to sit with him, to talk to him, to get him to take part. He felt included.