Many of those we work with had difficult experiences with secondary education. Some struggled to learn in a system that wasn’t suited to their way of learning. Others found it difficult to concentrate due to chaotic and violent home environments and being filled with anxiety about what they’d find when they returned home. Many were attempting to cope with their own experiences of trauma that kept them in a state of survival, finding it difficult to be receptive to their education.

“Our attendance rates are high and our completion rate consistently hovers around 80%, a testament to the bond that is created and cultivated throughout.”

Most of the people coming onto our courses at Foundation for Change are filled with anxiety at the idea of being in a learning environment again. They’ve heard—mostly through word of mouth, our most powerful tool—how life-changing the course can be. But reconciling that hope with their own fear and need for safety is a challenge. We name this from the outset, normalising and exploring it. That act of naming is the beginning: of people making sense of their inner worlds, of insight, of change.

Our closed-group format—where participants begin and end together without others joining midway as is often the case in treatment—creates the consistency needed for trust and safety. Our attendance rates are high and our completion rate consistently hovers around 80%, a testament to the bond that is created and cultivated throughout. The impact of finishing can’t be overstated: for many, it’s the first time they’ve completed something they truly value. It sparks a shift in identity—from someone who “never finishes anything” to someone who can and does. Many go on to college or university, carrying that momentum forward. 

On the final day, after receiving their graduation certificates, each person shares a reflection on their journey. One participant, a 56-year-old mother of two, said: 

“This course felt like a prototype of what the world could be. - FfC graduate.”

That prototype is something I’ve felt in my flesh and bones again and again over the past 21 years.

Over what is in actual fact an incredibly short amount of time (two full days per week for either six or eight weeks alongside fortnightly hour-long tutorials), a place of such profound safety is created where people feel able to drop the masks and armour that they have needed (and still need) to survive in the ‘real’ world. A place of collective authenticity that can only blossom from an individual centre of inner safety and security. A place where people learn about their relationship to uncertainty and begin feeling comfortable with the unknown. A place of mutual support and healthy interdependency. A place where women and men are able to talk freely about the impacts of the patriarchy, where people share honestly and openly their feelings of otherness and not belonging in the world. A place where people aren’t responding from places of victimhood, where they’re able to listen and hear and feel the other. A place where people are able to work with complexity and
nuance rather than react and reduce and simplify. A place of true community and belonging.

M Scott Peck, in his book The Different Drum: Community Making & Peace states that a community is "a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together, and to delight in each other, make others conditions our own”.

This isn’t theory. I know it’s real. The people who complete our courses know it too. This feeling is a call to action—a reminder that the way things are is not the way they have to be. We can reimagine, recreate and rebuild. And the prototypes born in spaces like ours must guide us. Now more than ever, we need them. They are an antidote to our times.