F.C. HOPE
Football occupies a completely unique position in our cultural landscape. It's not only a way of life but a tool for relating to others and building communities, families, and futures. F.C. HOPE is a football team for young adults with difficult living situations, giving disadvantaged boys and girls the structure and support of team sports. Through the most important parts of a person's development, we want F.C. HOPE to be the grounds on which these young adults can flourish.
AMATEUR ART AUCTION
In 2022 we started our annual amateur art auction. Mirroring our BREAK IN EMERGENCY Exhibition Series, we send bus panels to groups of artists in third-world countries. We then auction their bus panel paintings and send the proceeds straight back to fund the groups future projects.
Our first auction featured a group of young artists in Haiti. All 11 of their pieces sold to great success. All the proceeds were given to the Timoun Art School to pay for art supplies and meals during the workshops.
NEW HORIZON PARTNERSHIP
Our partnership with NHYC started back in 2017 after our Kickstarter project to donate 250 sleeping bags for young adults from 16 to 25 who were sleeping rough. Since then our relationship has grown into much more than a donation. From art workshops to a football team, trips out for Christmas and pizza parties, with the New Horizon Youth Center we will continue to use our creative products to help those in need.
4BYSIX PIZZA KITCHENS
We've joined forces with pizza restaurants around London to deliver pizzas to disadvantaged people across the city. We started this in the first lockdown with Trap Dough Pizza, bringing pizzas to hostels and the streets every Tuesday and Thursday for 4 months.
One of our favorite local projects, Doorstep London, based off of Finchley Road, looks after children with homeless parents. Whenever we have a Pizza Kitchen on the go, they are always the first to be called.
UNDER ONE SKY
Alongside our new partner, Under One Sky, we're excited to expand the scope of help we can give to the people of London, Brighton, and Durham. Under One Sky, established in 2012, has over 1500 volunteers serving over 500 homeless friends weekly and since 2020, UOS has distributed over 2.5 million items of support. With weekly handouts, we will be giving supplies to and working with their outreach teams to deliver even more provisions to the houseless communities of London.
SLEEPING BAGS
Sleeping bags are by far the most requested thing on the streets and it is what "kickstarted" 4BYSIX CIC. In 2017 we ran a Kickstarter campaign where supporters pledged money in exchange for an ethically made tracksuit or t-shirt. With every pledge we promised to make and distribute sleeping bags: three for every tracksuit and one for every t-shirt.
We hit our target and ended up creating 500 sleeping bags that were donated over the following winter. Since then we continue to hand out sleeping bags in partnership with Under One Sky.
EMERGENCY BLANKETS
In the UK temperatures can drop well below zero at night so in 2018 we created a jumper with a solution. In a pocket on the chest, the garment arrived to its new owner with an emergency blanket inside ready to hand out when you see somebody in need. We also sold backup blankets to refill the pocket. The blankets were so well received on the streets we decided to expand and have served 15 cities so far.
SPEDAL PARTNERSHIP
Spedal is a courier service born in response to youth homelessness and unemployment. They are a carbon neutral business that gives their riders a stable job and prepares them for the workforce with confidence and experience.
For the next two riders who begin their journey onto the job ladder we will be paying for the bicycles and training required to give them a leg up on employment. As our partnership with Spedal grows, we are excited to see how many of London's homeless we can help get one step closer to long-term employability.
LIBRARY BUS
With the help of B4H and The Lions Foundation we have converted a bus into a permanent on site library for the children of Dormers Wells Infant School.
The Dormers Wells Infant school’s OFSTED reports were recently rated poor with reading being the main area for improvement. This bus is used as a place for pupils to improve their reading skills, giving them access to books and storytelling sessions. The children are encouraged to use the bus during break and lunch times as a fun place to sit and read with classmates. The upstairs of the bus is a digital area for pupils to conduct research online.4BYSIX KNITTED HATS
Our knitted hat project has blown up in scale and has seen an unbelievable amount of hats distributed across the UK. This projects mission was to use knitted hats as a vessel for putting positive change into the hands of the privileged and share a little warmth with those less fortunate. From our pattern, people anywhere from 6 to 90 have sent us handmade woolly hats to be given to people in need. Knitters continue to send us and our partners hats, making it one of our largest scale projects.