Seaview Project is a charity based in Hastings that helps rough sleepers and vulnerable people to get back on their feet. When the Kickstart scheme opened, they wanted to offer young unemployed people the chance to join their team and support their important work. They chose Supplytrain as their Kickstart partner to help them do just that…

Sue Burgess, Projects Manager at Seaview, explains how the scheme benefitted the Kickstarters directly, the vulnerable people they support and allowed the charity to become more widely known across the county.

“We employed a Community Food Project Worker to directly support the work we do with vulnerable people, and we employed a Donations Coordinator to help manage our donations. These roles really supported the day-to-day work that our team does and helped us to provide more support to those most in need.

“Alongside the customer-facing roles, we also employed two young people as Digital Support Workers. The roles were created to oversee the design of Seaview’s digital assets and to develop our social media pages so that we could raise more awareness of the work we do.

“All the Kickstarters have contributed to our success, and we are really pleased to have kept one of the Digital Support Workers who has progressed onto a Digital Marketing apprenticeship and continues to apply her skills and grow into her position.

“Right from the off, she grasped the ethos of our work and helped to step-up our social media presence. We had next to no Instagram followers and now have over 400. Facebook is a similar story, going from 500 followers, to over 1.5K!

“We have seen her transform from a shy, slightly unconfident, young woman into a highly-skilled individual that recognises her skills, assets and talents. The Kickstart Scheme allowed us to invest in young people and has been a huge success for our charity and hopefully the young people too!”