With sufficient encouragement and support young people who have been in care can be successful in higher education.
For the last 20 years the Eve Brook Scholarship Fund has been supporting Birmingham City Council’s care-leavers by helping them to go to college or university and embark on successful careers. We have had huge success.
We provide bursaries and one-off payments to young people undertaking undergraduate and – now, increasingly – postgraduate courses. Birmingham now has, each year, over a hundred of its care-leavers at university, 15% of the cohort and well above the national average of 6%. We are proud to have contributed to this achievement. We have raised over £300,000 over the years and spent the vast bulk of it directly to support over 180 young people.
In the last financial year, we spent a record £31,000 supporting 18 young people at university, studying subjects ranging from social work to law, and from engineering to psychology. Our graduates have gone on to further studies and a wide range of professions. We raise all the money ourselves – around £20,000 a year. We hold fundraising events and receive donations from individuals and other charitable foundations.
We don’t just provide money: we also provide mentoring and other advice to care-leavers at university.
2018 will be our twentieth anniversary and we want to make a big fundraising effort. We also want to commemorate our founder, Eve Brook, her life and legacy since she inspired the setting up of the Fund. Cllr Eve Brook had been chair of Birmingham City Council Social Services and she was passionate about improving the life chances of young people in care and celebrating their achievements.
We are planning at least two big celebratory events:
• A dinner in March, the anniversary of Eve’s death and the foundation of the fund. Baroness Helena Kennedy QC – the keynote speaker at the launch of the fund in 1998 – will be the guest of honour at the reception.
• A summer party – details to follow.
We will also have a number of fundraising events through the year making as much effort as we can to raise more money ourselves.
Please use our website regularly and check ‘News and Events’ to see the events we are planning. Those of you on our email list will receive regular up-dates.
Please support us to help a lot more young people succeed in higher education and beyond!
If you would like to donate please give via our Just Giving ‘Donate Now’ link on the right hand of this page. Thank you.