School of Hard Knocks : Project Update

School of Hard Knocks is a social inclusion charity that uses sport to help young people address issues surrounding unemployment, crime and health. Through a long-term intervention they aim to help the most at-risk students to complete mainstream education.

School of Hard Knocks was awarded an RSA Catalyst grant earlier this year to make their schools project scalable and sustainable and are now ready to embark on the implementation stage of this new development.

In east London, they have been working with pupils in danger of exclusion from school, starting in year 9 and taking them through to the end of their GCSE course. The results have been fantastic and they are now about to embark on a new project based in Southwark. Bacon's College are participating and there are several other schools interested in joining the scheme if School of Hard Knocks can raise the funds to run a full programme.

It costs £600 per pupil per year to take the boys (only at the moment) out of school one afternoon a week and give them rugby based fitness training alongside intensive mentoring to help them with any family, social or school problems that they may have. School of Hard Knocks is launching a crowdfunding campaign to try to raise the £20,000 necessary to fund this new expansion of their programme.

Please go to www.sohk.org.uk/crowdfunding to find out more or pledge support.