This is an area that we have seen really grow and develop as our charity has grown.  We realised that seeking to bring hope into communities is not only possible through loving those in need, but they can be changed through the training and job opportunities that can be created for people in those communities. 

We have also seen that the more we invest as a charity in our team, the more we see the standards that we offer as a charity continue to rise. The success of our projects are a reflection of the team of people that we have trained and employed. As local people take over the management and running of our projects we are seeing our projects develop and thrive.

We believe in training our staff to enable us to give the best to the communities where we work.  A lot of the training is provided from within Hope for Communities and its connections. We have devoted many hours to developing locally applicable resources on topics such as safeguarding, which is essential when working with children and vulnerable adults.

We have also benefited from excellent support and input from organisations such as knownvaluedloved who have provided training around the topic of education for three different groups of our staff, and this training has really shaped so much of how our educationally focused projects operate.

One of our members of staff came to us whilst a university student completing an engineering degree. At our community centre in Barika he discovered a passion for teaching and education and now is a senior manager, oversees our community centre, and has recently completed and passed with distinction an International Post Graduate Certificate in Education with the University of Nottingham. This means that the children in this community, many of whom are stateless, whose parents are either refugees or were internally displaced and who are sadly used to receiving poor standards of education, are now being taught by one of the most highly qualified teachers in the city.  We believe there are many more excellent people in our region, and with the right opportunities they can work with us to really make a difference and bring hope to communities.

When you support hope for communities, you are becoming ‘part of it’, you are helping us to train and employ more local people who will invest in communities and bring lasting change.