Our End of Year Round Up of 2023 and Season’s Greetings

Our End of Year Round Up of 2023 Summary

As we close to reflect on the year, we are grateful that 2023 has panned out to be a year of much growth and celebration for MEaP and for our parents and students and partners. This post will look through what we are thankful for including what we celebrated in 2023.

Anniversary Celebrations in 2023

This year MEaP celebrates the tenth anniversary of its formation following the 2013 MEaP Conference: Alternative Approaches. But MEaP as a whole is not the only one to be celebrating: every single partner in the MEaP consortium is also acknowledging a significant milestone in 2023: Nurturing Foundations’ 5 years is particularly  being marked with an award to its trailblazing founder and CEO, Mrs Jumoke Quadri, recognising the incomparable work she has put in championing parent support as a foundation to developing resilient and accomplished youth. Highway Hope celebrated its 10th anniversary in August 2023 with a list of events commemorating their achievements including a much deserved party. Finally, Grace Incorporation Faith Trust (GIFT) Academy celebrated 20 years of incessant work for social inclusion of young people and not in employment adults with a series of data visualisations demonstrating the number of lives they have changed and continue to, the partners who helped them to do so and ways of digitally capturing any information that will help future generations take on the mantle and perfect their best practices. View the MEaP partners 2023 anniversary post to read more about this.

Twilight Academy 2023 update

Our student tuition delivery has grown by 50% to meet a higher demand. Retention so far has been over 90% and our Headteacher Dr Ornette Clennon is looking forward to welcoming additional teaching staff in the new year to accommodate the growth in demand. In effect, Twilight Academy has already hired a new Maths tutor using an in-house best practice of heavily incorporating student feedback as part of the recruitment process. This process reaffirms MEaP’s advocacy for young people and the organisation’s continuous championing of the student voice.

As one of the first teachers recruited using this process, Ruth Shuttleworth, our English teacher, was honoured to be chosen using this practice and continues to share her excitement about the work she does with her pupils. Asked one evening about how she felt about her students’ work and progress on the heritage poetry tuition session that she delivers, Ruth shares how “really blown away” she has been by the quality of their work. She says their work has been “insightful, thoughtful and really high-level”.

Windrush 75 Celebration

Making Education a Priority (MEaP) received an award to host a Windrush 75 Celebration from the National Lottery Fund. The Windrush 75 celebration award celebrates the history of heritage-led supplementary schools in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in the UK. The inter-generational event was led by MEaP and brought the community supplementary school’s Windrush together. You can read more about the Windrush 75 celebration in this article.

Awards in 2023

MEaP was proud to have two of its directors nominated for FutureEd Awards 2023. The article ‘MEaP directors shortlisted for FutureEd Awards 2023’ gives more details about the two FutureEd Awards nominees. With immense pride, we wholeheartedly applaud Mrs. Jumoke Quadri, MEaP director and CEO and founder of Nurturing Foundations, for winning the prestigious FutureEd award for Parent Support Champion. Mrs. Jumoke Quadri’s remarkable dedication to supporting parents has rightfully earned her the FutureEd award for 2023.

MEaP has received a highly esteemed badge from Manchester City Council, the Manchester City Council’s Higher Award for Quality and Safeguarding, acknowledging its exceptional efforts in upholding high standards of quality and safeguarding. Several MEaP staff members have also been recognized for their dedication and achievements with MCC awards.

MaCTRI publications and advocacy in 2023

Our training and research centre, MaCTRI also has much to celebrate. Among other achievements this year, we celebrate the publication of two books for the Palgrave series on decolonisation:

• The latest book, released in the last few weeks (November 24th 2023), is called Decoloniality In The Grassroots and The Re-emergence of the Black Organic Intellectual. The book was penned by Dr Ornette D Clennon and Claudia Sampaio.
• In March, we had a book launch for the earlier release  This book was the first in the decolonisation series and written by Faye Bruce and Dr Ornette D. Clennon.

Our MaCTRI Head of institute, Dr Ornette D Clennon, shared recommendations from the TRI report at the Manchester Racial Equity Conference and also sat at the UN forum advocating for black people’s rights two times this year. As part of MaCTRI’s advocacy role, Dr. Ornette D. Clennon, made significant contributions to the Draft UN Declaration on the Promotion and Full Respect of the Human Rights of People of African Descent. His key recommendations were subsequently integrated into the Preliminary Conclusions and Recommendations of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent’s first and second sessions. These contributions, made in collaboration with Dr. Michael McEachrane, highlight Dr. Clennon’s role in shaping the discourse and direction of this important document.

New and growing partnerships

The Manchester Supplementary Schools Partnership (MSSP) has gone from strength to strength this year, forging great connections that improve and support supplementary schools in Manchester for the benefit of the children and young people we serve. Both Young Manchester and MEaP (leads in the partnership alongside YPF-Trust NRCSE) have created web pages that highlight the work of the partnership, with accessible registration forms welcoming others to join. MEaP also reports on the quarterly updates and you can also find an exhaustive list of the partners on The Manchester Supplementary Schools Partnership (MSSP) webpage.

Outside of MSSP, MaCTRI continues to grow and has now formed a new partnership with University of Namibia, more details on this to come. Check the MaCTRI website for any news.

Looking forward to 2024

MEaP is looking forward to 2024 including the following works:

• Assessing the impact of our Youth-Led Community Safety project. The Youth-Led Community Safety project is a project sponsored by Young Manchester and is delivered by the whole consortium as a partnership. The project delivers free After-School activities (Nov 2023 – Jan 2024) across Manchester including music, sport, inspiring talks, food, sports, games, health, wellbeing, personal development, arts & crafts, creative writing and African and Caribbean dance lessons in partnership with Dance Studios. The full description of the Youth-Led Community Safety project is available on the dedicated page.
• The Youth, Play and Participation project funded by Manchester City Council is another project for young people that will be delivered by the MEaP consortium, this time with Highway Hope as the lead partner! The consortium partners will again deliver skills and wellbeing sessions for children and young people, including music and dance classes.
• Easter 2024 intensives will be welcoming some new GCSEs future graduates.
• We will also be building new teacher training courses for launch from September 2024

In the meantime, have yourself a merry Christmas 2023 and a Happy New Year!