The Reach Out project aims to help those who engage improve literacy and numeracy skills, reduce social isolation, improve mental and physical health, improve IT skills and employability chances. This is all done through facilitating various classes/courses as appropriate. The project is student led/student centred and the courses are facilitated through student input, ideas and help.
The project is open to both males and females, aged 16+.
Reach Out is a genuinely non-discriminatory project, which values its learners equally. It works with particularly marginalised and vulnerable people, and successfully employs an empowering adult learning approach with many of those for whom the service 'model' would be more likely to be a therapeutic intervention. It is underpinned by WEA values, reflecting equality, and the fundamental importance of using a genuinely student-centred learning approach as a means to raising confidence levels and increasing self esteem - and ultimately changing lives.
The WEA Reach Out staff do not judge, and are prepared to support the learning journeys of their learners, irrespective of their previous history and on-going issues. The project’s target groups, which include those with long term substance misuse issues, mental health issues, those going through the criminal justice system, and those with learning difficulties/disabilities, are frequently defined by their ‘issue’ – and offered ‘specialist’ interventions/service provision.