Main Contact: Sarah Misra
Befriend a Child are an independent, Aberdeen-based charity - and Scotland’s oldest befriending service for disadvantaged and vulnerable children - focused on providing support to young people across Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire. The children that Befriend a Child supports are all aged 4-16 and often come from troubled family backgrounds of parental drug and alcohol abuse, neglect and inconsistent parenting. Many have never travelled in a car, have no concept of how to eat with a knife and fork and have no idea what lies beyond the city boundaries.
The charity’s motto is to ‘Turn a Frown Upside Down’ and their core service is a 1:1 befriending scheme whereby the children it supports are provided with a positive adult role model – the Volunteer Befriender – who meets with them on a fortnightly basis to engage in a range of fun, everyday activities which most people would take for granted but which family and home circumstances mean are not realistic aspirations for these youngsters. In recent years, Befriend a Child has taken on a number of new projects to expand and complement its core befriending service. These include school holiday Play Schemes, an activity-based programme for children waiting to be befriended – called Kids are Go! and the Grandparents as Parents Project, a support group for grandparents acting as the parent for their grandchildren.
This year sees Befriend a Child celebrate 40 years of service, now providing support for over 300 local children each year and offering a fulfilling volunteering opportunity to people of all ages and from all walks of life.