Latest news from our blog about volunteering & fundraising

KEEN LONDON NORTH IS NOW LIVE

KEEN LONDON NORTH IS NOW LIVE

Remember remember the 5th November, the day our new service launched!

Thank you to everyone that has supported the opening of our new third site in North/West London. To the donors and funders, the new and existing volunteers and our brand new athletes who have brought enthusiasm and smiles while taking on a brand new activity with new faces!

We absolutely loved our first session, we loved meeting you all and after months of busy prepping behind the scenes we are so happy to finally be up and running. Our first session started small as we want to get to know our new athletes but judging by the happy faces, and positive feedback, word of mouth should very soon see this sports hall bursting at the seams.

KEEN London North is our third site and joins our East and South London services offering children with additional needs the opportunity to play, make friends and take part in sports and games with the one-to-one support of our volunteer […]

November 4th, 2022|Categories: latest news|Tags: London charity, one-to-one fun, sessions|

What is CAP?

What is CAP?

Our Coach Apprenticeship Programme (CAP) first trialed in 2019 (before being cut short by covid). Three young people who were ready to take the next step from accessing our service as a beneficiary joined our programme to start supporting our service as a volunteer.

For many of the young people we support, KEEN London is such a huge part of their life that they want to continue being a part of it even when feeling like they have outgrown our sessions. And that is where CAP came from, a beneficiary led idea that addresses the need to remove the barriers to accessing employment or long term volunteering as a young person with additional needs.

Find out more…

January 17th, 2022|Categories: latest news|Tags: apprenticeship, CAP, coach, London charity, one-to-one fun|

Our Hackney half runners and volunteers smashed it!

Our Hackney half runners and volunteers smashed it!

They smashed it!

For the third year running (we don’t include 2020) a KEEN London team of staff, volunteers, families, and supporters took to the streets of Hackney to raise funds and awareness for our free and supported weekly sessions for children with additional needs. This is a huge achievement but this year our adult team had a tough act to follow as the KEEN London athletes set a high standard on the Saturday taking part in the one mile schools challenge. We were so proud of the five young people that took part in this huge event and gave it their all (our coaches and staff running with them struggled to keep up! Seeing our runners cross the finish line was very emotional for us all as many of these amazing people signed up way back in 2019 and have waited, trained and fundraised for two years to get to this point.

The […]

October 5th, 2021|Categories: fundraising, latest fundraising|Tags: children with disabilities, Hackney Half, London charity, one-to-one fun|

Thank you to all our Bubble Buddies!

Thank you to all our Bubble Buddies!

WOW, we have had sooooo much fun stomping in the mud, playing in the park, nature watching, nature walking, bubble blowing and so much more.

For a project that came out of a pandemic and a desperate need for us to bring back some real time face to face, one to one support we are pretty pleased. KEEN TV was great, it got us through the winters but our sincere thanks go to the volunteerism funders and great young people that came out with us.

In total we ran 65 Bubble Buddy sessions, massing up over 1,000 hours of one-to-one support over 140 trip hours. Over 500 one-to-one buddies (athlete and coach) got out into our fabulous great outdoors and with a little help from the odd mask, a lot of sanitizer and regular testing we showed Covid that KEEN London doesnt stop having fun.

Our thanks to the following funders for supporting this work either by funding […]

September 14th, 2021|Categories: Covid-19, latest news|Tags: Bubble Buddies, children with disabilities|

Goodbye KEENTV — hello Bubble Buddies!

Goodbye KEENTV — hello Bubble Buddies!

Thank you to everyone that has spent their Saturday mornings with us at #KEENTV. We said goodbye last weekend (24th April) after over 40 weeks of dancing, ball skills, zumba, yoga, duck duck goose and of course the Hokey Cokey. We have loved every minute but love seeing you in person more and that means lots of Bubble Buddies! Every Saturday we will be meeting up in parks, woodlands, wetlands and fields to play, explore and have FUN!

April 30th, 2021|Categories: Covid-19, latest news|Tags: Bubble Buddies, KEEN TV!|

KEEN London joins the Disabled Children’s Partnership (DCP)

KEEN London joins the Disabled Children’s Partnership (DCP)

We are adding our small but mighty weight to the campaign to create a country where disabled children and young people have the right support and access to the same opportunities most of us take for granted. KEEN London is the 84th charity to join the coalition and we hope it will help us to ensure the voices of our families are heard higher up. For more information and to add your support visit https://disabledchildrenspartnership.org.uk