Overcoming Hardships and Owning Your Future

Rebecca, 18 from Angus recently took part in 2 Street League programmes and has been kind enough to give us some insights into her journey.

To say Rebecca has had a tough few years has been an understatement. After lockdown and sadly experiencing bereavement after losing her best friend, Rebecca’s confidence and mental wellbeing were at an all-time low.

However, she is lucky to have a very close and supportive family and it was Rebecca’s mum Karen who first contacted us after seeing an advert for the Street League Angus Programme on Facebook.  Karen was keen to help her daughter and thought that Street League would be a good opportunity for Rebecca to make friends and improve her self-esteem.

At the beginning of the programme Rebecca was understandably nervous and shy, but it didn’t take long for her to really embrace the Street League routine and step out of her comfort zone. For someone who had never been particularly interested in sports, Rebecca participated in every activity and with Street Leagues support she really pushed herself to improve her physical and mental wellbeing. This positive attitude extended outside of Street League with Rebecca setting and achieving her own goals to walk to and from Street League every day.

As well as the physical benefits, it was clear to see that Rebecca was benefitting socially and mentally, very quickly interacting with the group and becoming a great source of support and friendship for the other young people in the programme.

During preliminary career discussions, Rebecca was considering a job in retail, so we assisted her to gain a work placement with Farmfoods. Although Rebecca enjoyed the customer facing part of the role there were aspects of the job which were not the right fit for her. We reassured her that was ok and that sometimes it is just as important to find out what you don’t enjoy as well as the tasks that you do. This was a really valuable learning experience and we were proud of Rebecca for giving it a try.

Over the next couple of months, we continued to support Rebecca with confidence building and career discussions to help her progress into something she was really interested in. After a meeting with Street Leagues partners in the Learner Engagement Team at Dundee College, Rebecca decided she was interested in business management and applied for the Business Management and Administration course.

To support her in this goal, Street League arranged a second work placement for Rebecca, working on the reception desk at the world famous Carnoustie Golf Hotel.  This has given Rebecca front line experience of completing business administration tasks for a large organisation and set her up well for what she can expect to learn at college. She has really enjoyed it and as always given 100% effort as testified by the excellent feedback, we have had from her Supervisor Shannon.

We are delighted that Rebecca has now been offered an unconditional place at college and will start in August. We will of course keep in touch with her and are very excited for everything that the future holds!