Our President, Laura, recently received this letter from MYPAS to thank all members for taking part in the Scottish Coastline Challenge which raised a total of £1,961.

Dear Laura
Eskvale Hockey Club – Scottish Coastline Challenge

On behalf of the staff, Board and all the young people we support, thank you so much for Eskvale Hockey Club’s fundraising of £1961 through your virtual Coastline Challenge. We really appreciate the gesture, admire the collective club effort (11595 kilometres!) and of course are delighted to receive much needed funds.

We continue to receive high levels of demand for our services and we are anticipating increased levels when the schools return. These funds will really help us to continue to satisfy this increasing demand. Please thank the entire Club on our behalf for their fantastic achievement.

As you will probably know, MYPAS is the only Midlothian-based charity providing health and wellbeing services across Midlothian for vulnerable young people. We have counselling services, art therapy, young men’s therapeutic work, substance use support and support for LGBT+ young people. We receive funding from a range of different sources but donations from local people not only helps us to continue our work but also shows support from the communities we work in.

We regularly update our website and social media pages with aspects around our areas of work:
www.mypas.co.uk
https://twitter.com/_MYPAS
https://www.facebook.com/MYPAS2/
We will shortly put up a thank you to Eskvale through these platforms.

As an example of how our work, and how donations towards our work, makes a difference: MYPAS is the only charitable provider of young people’s counselling in Midlothian. A recent report to a funder of part of our counselling services showed an improvement in young people’s mental health in 90% of the cases and an improvement in social functioning (how they relate to others) in 90% of the cases concluded. On average we were able to achieve in the last year a 45% improvement in young people’s mental health and a 35% increase in their social functioning. Here is what some of the young people themselves had to say about our service:

“Counselling has been really beneficial as I feel that otherwise I would have no one to talk to. It has helped me to make sense of difficult feelings.”

“Counselling is the only thing I look forward to in the week.”

“When I am here I feel safe to be vulnerable. I’ve been able to cry here and talk about things that are embarrassing without feeling judged.”

We are looking to develop a Friends of MYPAS. This would be a regular e-newsletter (perhaps 4 times a year) with an update on the organisation. There would be no expectations on people who sign up – it will be designed only to simply update interested parties on our work. If you would like to be included on our contacts list for this e-newsletter then please let me know.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you wish to discuss anything further or would like more details on our work. My e-mail address and main office phone number are at the end of this letter.

Thanks again for helping to make a difference to young people’s health and wellbeing in Midlothian and East Lothian.
Yours sincerely
Dave Evans
Manager