Our Vision

Our Vision

Bishop’s Stortford Youth Project’s vision is to welcome, engage, encourage and empower young people and the youth culture in Bishop’s Stortford and surrounding areas by providing:

• a youth cafe

• a targeted mental wellbeing project

• a mentoring project in local secondary schools

• school holiday activities

• opportunities for youth volunteering and social action.

OUR MISSION

Our mission is to create “safe places” for young people in Bishop’s Stortford.

We believe that young people flourish and grow when they are in a safe environment.

Providing a safe space is seen in a holistic way at Bishops Stortford Youth Project and we aim to create an environment where young people are kept physically safe but where they are safe to be themselves and able to make mistakes and learn rather than be criticized.  

Our values

We have a Christian Ethos and our values are rooted in the Christian faith.  We encourage kindness and respect to be shown to everyone.  We aim to treat other as we would wish to be treated.  We focus on relationships and we emphasise self-respect, respect for others and respect for the environment and wider community.

We want to help provide strong foundations for young people where they can flourish and grow into well rounded, grounded adults who contribute as individuals and part of their community to society.

Bishop’s Stortford Youth Project is driven by faith but does not specifically aim to advance Christian education and learning.

Our Strategy

Our strategy is to Welcome - Engage - Encourage - Empower young people of Bishop’s Stortford and the surrounding area.

We believe that in order to influence or change something you first need to make people feel WELCOME. We meet young people through open access to the Thirst Youth Cafe and targeted youth work. They feel welcome and secure in a safe environment.  

To ENGAGE with the young people of Bishop’s Stortford, we spend time getting to know and understand our young people better. Thirst Youth Cafe is a safe place where they can build strong and trustworthy relationships with positive and responsible role models. We also recognise that we need to constantly learn more about current youth culture to remain relevant and appealing.

We ENCOURAGE young people, their talents and abilities and their culture. We encourage them to explore their potential and provide them with opportunities to get involved.

We believe that young people should have a voice and be heard and we want to facilitate this at Thirst Youth Cafe. This means encouraging creativity in the arts, media, musically and providing a performance space for their voices to be heard. 

We want to encourage young people to try things and learn new skills, pursuing excellence without having to be perfect.

We EMPOWER young people to grow, develop and reach their full potential. 

This could be physically, educationally, emotionally or spiritually.  They are in charge of their futures and can make a difference and we are here to guide and offer advice and support, as required.

Future Plans

We have exciting plans to develop Bishop’s Stortford Youth Project in the future and provide a wide range of additional youth services including:

• support during the cost of living crisis

• “Healthy Eating for Healthy Living” food preparation workshops

• further opportunities to allow young people to pursue their creative talents in the Arts, Music or Sport,

  (subject to securing additional funding and volunteer support).