This summer almost 9,200 young people took part in The Challenge across London, Surrey, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Lancashire. Young people will carry out their final social action projects this weekend, which include running a mini Olympics event for local families in Birmingham and a Manchester team working on a gardening project with THOMAS (a Salford based charity that provide drug and alcohol rehabilitation services).

As the summer comes to an end, we now turn our attention to delivery of our first ever Autumn pilots (some of which will run during term time). We also look forward to kicking off the second year of our year-round graduate programme, The Challenge Society, which aims to keep thousands of graduates and their friends engaged in sustained community action and ongoing opportunities to develop new skills through team and individual projects.

In this edition we share programme updates, spotlight two funders and report fundraising activity our very own staff have been up to.

We want to thank every business, community organisation, funder, parent and school that has partnered with us and made the programme a success this year; you have made all the difference.

Craig Morley, Chief Executive