Free to Be Kids

Who we are

Free to Be Kids supports particularly disadvantaged London children to experience feeling brave, adventurous, proud and successful, often for the first time in a long time.

We do this via immersive, therapeutically structured residential projects in natural environments, London based mentoring and our growing Young Leaders' programme. Based in central-south London, we are a small but rapidly growing charity focussed on helping vulnerable children change their stories about who they are, and who they can become.

Our main programme, Thrive Outside, is built around horizon broadening residential projects designed to work for children who might otherwise struggle to find the confidence to be adventurous, who might be too anxious to reach out and make new friends, or who might usually deal with setbacks by becoming angry or upset. By taking them away from home for a week at a time into new environments, we help these children develop their stories about themselves, and to realise they can acheive more than they had thought. For those who need longer term support, we offer year round follow up work matched to children's needs. This could be London based mentoring, recurring respite residential breaks, or a place on our year long Journey Programme - a sequence of smaller group residentials designed for children who are really struggling. 

We work closely with a range of schools, housing associations, social services' teams and other organisations to reach the children most in need. Many are experiencing real adversity - growing up with housing instability/homelessness, food poverty, with parents experiencing drug/alcohol or mental health challenges, childhood trauma or neglect, or taking on the role of young carers. Sadly, many have developed entrenched ideas of themselves as 'bad', 'failing', 'rejected' or somehow 'broken'.

We build our projects to help children with these kind of stories about themselves to instead feel special, valued and included, and to offer them the chance to be children away from the pressures and challenges of their day to day lives. All of our projects are filled with joy and adventure - from torchlit nightwalks through the woods, a first ever trip to the beach to paddle in the sea, canoeing across a lake, sleeping out under the stars for the first time or roasting marshmallows over a campfire with new friends.

Our approach has real results - in 2019 99% of children attending our projects showed indicators of improved confidence and self-esteem, and 100% of referrers reported children's emotional health or behaviour improved after the project. Our work has been recognised by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, via his Young Londoner's fund, and via the Fore trust who identify and incubate exceptional early stage charities. We were London Youth's Outdoor Education Charity of the Year, 2019. We are at a very exciting stage of our growth and if your vision fits ours, we look forward to receiving your application.