Project Youth Founders Carl and Karla

Carl

Carl was born and raised in the city of Nottingham in 1982

Throughout his childhood Carl experienced some significant trauma's through events that happened which were out of his control. 

Through his life he moved from one house to another and was never settled in one place which he could call home. 

From an early age he had experienced childhood abuse, domestic violence within the home and got groomed into gangs from the age of 13. 

Into his teenage years he struggled with addiction which with the gang life style this ended up leading him to be placed in to the prison system in his late teens.

Carl would battle with this life for many years up until 7 years ago when he stood back and had a long hard look at him self and how he would like to see his future. 

Carl entered counselling and support services to help him with  his personal issues at the same time as volunteering for a local drug and alcohol service where later on he managed to successfully gain employment. 

Carl helped many vulnerable adults to achieve sobriety from drugs and alcohol via one to one and group support which led him onto helping Sussex police volunteering to help with young people by telling his own story on the hope of them making the right choices in life. 

Carl successfully gained employment with an early intervention program called Reboot working as a youth coach helping to empower young people to reach their full potential in life which got recognised quickly resulting in Carl being nominated for best new comer to the youth world. 

Carl worked with over 77 young people and found this very rewarding.

As a youth coach carl and his team would work closely with the schools, social services/early help key workers to try and get the best out come for the young persons and their families. 

Carl is now a fully qualified Youth worker and has been helping young people in the community for the last 5 years.

Moving forward to now, Carl & Karla wanted to set up Project Youth to help give young people a voice and the best opportunity's in life from which Carl  never had and show the youth that anything is possible if you put your mind to it and Carl him self is living proof of that. 

Karla

Karla was born in Hastings in 1992, 1 of 5 children she grew up in a busy household where she describes her home life as being "normal", Karla says she was very fortunate to grow up with both parents and things were really good until she got into her teenage years where she struggled a lot with mental health and rebelled against her parents who were very overprotective due to the trauma of sadly losing their first baby, Karla says "when i was 14 i wanted  to go out with my friends and didn't realise some of the potential dangers i would put myself in, so when my parents would want me home before my friends had to be in.  I started staying out a lot and lying to them, i then began drinking alcohol and dabling with drugs which went on for a good few years. i got in a relationship at 17 and ended up pregnant by the time i had turned 18. I decided i would  go ahead  with my pregnancy and completely sorted my life out, however over the next few years i went through domestic abuse and my mental health was completely destroyed,  i was depressed and crippled with anxiety,  i went through lots of counselling sessions, CBT and eventually Trauma based therapy at one point i had psychiatric involvement  and was diagnosed with ADHD. Over the years i have done a lot of work on myself and went on to secure a job working with offending women with issues  around  Addiction, Criminality, homelessness Mental Health needs and so much more  it was a custody based role but we also supported women out in the community. I loved every minute of my job and only left when my grans dementia got worse and i needed to go and stay with her to look  after her,  i've always enjoyed helping others and i understand how sometimes all someone needs  is  a little bit of support to help set them up for their future, so when an opportunity come up for myself and Carl to set  up a project we was both passionate about this is when Project Youth was born.