Comments from our HOPE project women (18-25 year olds) within the evaluation carried out by independent researcher Lara McHale. Cohort 4 work with women surviving abuse, women affected by the criminal justice system and women with often complex and multiple needs. HOPE was a 12 month project designed to offer opportunity, skills and training to our younger Cohort 4 women, and as a result 5 gained employment due to increases in self confidence, skills and enhanced motivation to believe in their capabilities.
‘Cohort 4 keep me level headed as well because I do go off on a tangent and they help me feel quite grounded as such and when I have gone to make stupid decisions they’ve gone “Do you really think that’s necessary and if it is do you think you could do it like another way?” so they’ve kept me out of some tricky situations as well’
‘The amount they’ve helped me is absolutely unreal. I was in a really abusive relationship with my obviously ex boyfriend and like the whole way through my degree like if I had an essay due in he’d steal my memory stick, if I print something off he’d rip it up, like he was really, really horrible. The HOPE project pushed me through the end of my degree. Whenever I am feeling upset and sometimes distraught, I know there is someone there who I can talk to’.
