Zac’s Story

Zac is a young person on our 2024 - 2025 Core Programme. He is an incredibly polite and helpful young man facing extraordinarily difficult home circumstances. Zac lives with 3 other siblings and a single Mum, but his Mum’s health is poor and the family have recently faced eviction from their house, causing Zac to spend time in foster care and in various shelters as they navigate homelessness. This was having a huge impact on Zac and he would come to school looking tired and drained with a heaviness to him.

Going on Basecamp trips has completely shaken up Zac’s life. Taking him to new places (he had never left Leeds before) with new people, to do new activities has brought him completely out of himself. It is a pleasure to watch Zac smiling, laughing and running around, living the carefree outdoor childhood he so deserves to experience. So far Zac has abseiled off a quarry in the dark, summited 2 mountains and taken on a mega canoe expedition across Derwentwater!

As part of our pre-programme onboarding, the young people complete a self-assessment ‘Shooting Star’ which measures how they feel in areas such as aspiration, communication and confidence. They then have to set themselves a goal in one of these areas, to focus on for the programme. After a 30 minute coaching session on this, Zac said:

“I think I’d like to set myself a goal of doing more interesting things outside of school. I help my Mum a lot but home can get intense, and I’d really like to do more things like Basecamp after school.”

After the first 2 trips we revisited this goal with Zac and with a huge grin on his face he told us he’d started going to a local gym with his cousin to exercise! He then told us this is part of a bigger plan to start a boxing club soon once he has got his fitness up. We cannot wait to see where Zac ends up by the end of the programme.