We'd like you to come along!

The AMPLIFY event will last for two days (August 5th/6th) and allow young people aged from 14 to 17 from across England to come together, make friends, learn new skills and share their views with us on how they feel about the Care System and the impact of "Care Matters".

They will choose from a wide selection of entertaining and valuable workshops, take part in consultation using modern media, be offered information and advice on a range of issues and get the opportunity to win an amazing selection of prizes including laptops, digital cameras, i-pods and more!

Everybody gets their own room. Special food requirements and abilities are catered for and there will even be a series of workshops available for workers. Attendance at this conference will also count towards PRTL requirements for social workers.

For more info including booking info and form downloads go to the AMPLIFY Page Read about the last AMPLIFY event

“It was great, I have never met a famous star before and I have seen lots of her films. We got to interview her to be an Ambassador for ANV and she was so lovely; really cares about young people and making a difference. She talked to us about her experiences being in Care, she was really passionate about our work and trying to make a difference to the Care system. It was a fantastic day and an amazing experience to meet her.”

A World of Difference

Samantha also recently spent a day working for A National Voice to launch 'A World of Difference', a campaign started by Vodafone that enables people to work for a charity for a year. She said of ANV and the campaign

“I feel really passionate about helping children and young people who are in the Care system. I support A National Voice as it aims to make positive changes to the Care system in the UK and gives a voice to those being cared for. The World of Difference project gives people the opportunity to work with their own favourite charity - I've seen first hand what a difference an extra pair of hands can make.”

The Campaign

Vodafone (The Vodafone Group Foundation) has been looking for four people to take a year out from their jobs to work for their favourite charities. They will be paid, via the 'World of Difference' programme, up to £25,000 towards outgoings and £20,000 for expenses.

The foundation have commissioned research which found that:

• six million workers experience low points in their jobs on a daily basis
• 41% feel there is more to life than what they are doing now
• many believe that taking a break from work to pursue other interests or offer their time to charity would boost their job and life satisfaction

but 70% of people didn’t feel that they could financially give up their jobs to do charitable work which is where the WOD programme's salary and expenses comes in.

More about the World of difference Campaign

More about the Vodafone Group Foundation

Just go to our supporters page for the info and to download the form, fill it in and send it to us. There's a small fee for companies/organisations and local authorities but individual and user group membership is free.

You can also make a donation using the same form or by going to our Just Giving page and doing it online. There you can make a single or regular monthly donation of however much you want.

The Just Giving site also gives you the opportunity to do some fundraising for ANV. You could, for instance, have a sponsored chocolate eating marathon (or something?) make a page on our Just Giving site and tell everyone you can to go to that page and start sponsoring you. After that the page is all automagically updated with total donations, progress meter, list of sponsors etc. and all the money raised is automatically transferred into ANV's bank account ready to be put to good use.

Give it a go, it's easy. Join our big band, become part of the chorus, support our voice.

Go to the Support ANV page

Go to the Just Giving page

View our Supporters List

Our plan is to get as much info on to the SuperSonic website as we can before it goes live and from then on profiles can be added by individuals themselves or on behalf of others through the website itself.

In the meantime we have made a video for you to watch about the concepts behind the campaign. This short documentary looks at the ideas behind SuperSonic. Football player and TV presenter Mark Bright, poet Lemn Sissay and other mortals discuss their experiences and thoughts about Care and life after it. The film asks questions about the barriers that being in Care can bring, how can they be broken, what success really means and whether a man can really fly.

You can see it at our video page or you can watch it at google video

RE:verb is a huge online project that requires a rugged and stable system that can cope with a potentially heavy usage, both on the publishing side and at the public/visitor side. To that end we have been researching and implimenting an appropriate software solution. We have also been updating the user interface and overall look and feel of the websites.

So we can only apologise to those that have been frustrated by this work and to ask for a little more patience while we endeavour to get the best tools for what is a worthy and valuable project.