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our story

asphaleia House opened in March 1999 providing support to five newly arrived refugee children. Within four months it was full, with the majority of young people coming from Kosovo. Over the next few months other young people arrived from Somali, Eritrea, Congo and Rwanda.

And that was just the very beginning... what a journey it has been! From that small team in Worthing running two houses for refugee children, asphaleia now employs around 75 staff and delivers a range of impacting services in London, Kent, Sussex and West Africa.

Our charity asphaleia action was established in 2000 to enable the team to fully express their passion by being able to raise funds to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable children and young people wherever they may be. This desire has led us as far as Africa where we now employ a team of people working across two locations who have carried on the asphaleia adventure.

We are a registered charity, operating under the guidelines of the charity commission. To view our latest accounts, please click here.

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• Our mission & values
  
  

  The asphaleia action mission is simple - to impact as many lives of children and young people who have experienced disadvantage as we can. We believe it is a simple, but very powerful mission that drives forward every aspect of our delivery and ensures we place children and young people at the heart of everything we do.

  We aim to deliver our mission by:

  • Delivering a diverse range of services to children and young people that contribute significantly to their development and well being in various regions
  • Providing support services to the organisations that work with children and young people
  • Creating new services
  • Creating and delivering additional charitable projects that deliver innovative, action based services to children and young people

  Our values are summed up by three simple principles and these, when in action, create the asphaleia way of doing things. When working with children and young people, other professionals or colleagues we believe service and co-operation can only begin to be achieved to a high standard by considering the world of others. However, we believe it is not enough to solely believe the world of others matters - this is only a starting place. The asphaleia group believe in demonstrating our value of those we deliver services to, those who pay for our services and those we work with in every possible way.

  Finally, we believe we should aim to do everything well. We realise excellence is a journey and not a finitely achievable thing. Therefore even when we have done something well we should then aim to do it even better.

• Our leadership
  
  

  The charity has a group of Trustees who provide leadership and governance to ensure it is run according to the right guidelines and requirements, as well as maintaining a high standard of quality.

  Trevor Pettifer, Chair

  Trevor has been a trustee of asphaleia action since it began and was integral to developing the original objectives of the charity in working with marginalised young people - an issue he is firmly committed to.

  Shriti Lakhani, Company Secretary

  Shriti has worked for the asphaleia group for over five years and has experience of working with UK and International charities and seeing the impact of asphaleia action's work with young people. In 2007 and 2011, Shriti went to Sierra Leone to visit the Kabor Project and get direct personal experience of the issues facing our service users there.

  Ermias Yosef

  Ermias has known asphaleia since he arrived in the country over eight years ago. First as an accomodated young person, and since as a volunteer with A+ and as a member of the fostering panel.
  He is passionate about the work and mission of asphaleia "impacting the lives of Children and Young People....." as he has experienced and witnessed the life changing work it does, first hand.

  David Cottrell

  David part founded asphaleia action seeing it as fundamental to the desires of the asphaleia group to impact as many children and young people as possible. David has previously worked in the faith and voluntary sector and was a Trustee of a local charity for 10 years before founding the asphaleia group. He became a Trustee in 2008.

  Nicky Greet

  Nicky has extensive experience of the development of vocational qualification frameworks, training and education, both within the UK and overseas. She passionately believes that delivered appropriately education can change lives, providing new opportunities for children and young people. Nicky has sat on various boards in the non-for-profit sector and has recently become a trustee of asphaleia.

  Simon Smith

  Since 1983, Simon has had a very successful career in retail product and brand management for many high profile companies. In 2006, Simon passed an IOD Diploma in company direction and has become an IOD Chartered Director. Since then, Simon has set up his own consultancy acting in the capacity of consultant on proposed brand acquisitions and set up as Managing Director a company supplying fashion clothing to the main blue chip high street retailers and key fashion brands in Europe.

  Simon brings a great deal of valuable commercial knowledge to the Board of Trustees and is passionate about his role within the charity.