NE Charity Awards Charity Partnership with Karbon Homes

The corporate charity partnership between Karbon Homes and Building Self-Belief CIO has had a huge and positive impact upon the lives of hundreds of people located in in the Consett and Stanley areas of County Durham across many years. It is a genuine, long term partnership where our shared commitment to the communities that support is central to all that we do.

Building Self-Belief have consistently worked positively alongside Karbon Homes to engage people in youth, heritage, environmental, social isolation, community gardening and combatting household poverty based initiatives that have made huge difference to peoples lives.

The Importance of Collaboration

All of our collaborative programmes have centred upon increasing young peoples’ skills and aspirations, reducing social isolation, building new friendships, addressing household poverty and creating volunteering opportunities where individual circumstances may be a barrier to participation. We feel that working together to support our communities is far more powerful than working isolation.

Our First Wellbeing Project

Building Self-Belief was established in 2018, and it was Jess Alexander who funded one of our very first wellbeing Programmes at Consett Academy. It was a Year 9 programme for girls. It was highly successful and we really appreciated the support, because getting funding at such an early stage as a charity is very difficult, and we really appreciated the support. 

Further Collaboration

Post Lockdown was difficult for everyone, so we really appreciated the funding from Karbon Homes, in 2022, where they worked with us in support of underprivileged young people in the Consett by supporting the establishment of our Consett Youth Panel - Empowering Consett’s Youth. Morpeth Castle – A Weekend of Culture to Inspire our Youth Panel | Building Self Belief . 

The aim of this group is to empower young people and give them strategies and the self-belief to take ownership of their lives to help to build a stronger local community themselves.

Eco Projects

We have also worked collaboratively on a ‘Greener Future for Stanley’ youth project designed to empower local young people in creating a new green space for their peers and community to enjoy. A Greener Future for Stanley - Environmental Youth Ambassadors Project | Building Self Belief and A Greener Future for Stanley | Building Self Belief Both links demonstrate the success of the programme and how much the students enjoyed such a hands on approach to learning.

Employability

In January 2025, we have also worked collaboratively on a specialist ‘Teenage Wellbeing and Employability Programme’ to give young people from the Stanley area support around their future aspirations and the skills required to achieve their goals.  Take a look at the success of the programme - Careers Event at North Durham Academy | Building Self Belief . Central to this was our ‘Northeast Careers Event’ held at North Durham Academy, sponsored Karbon Homes, which was a huge success!, with over 30 businesses kindly give up their time to speak to hundreds of students about their careers, job roles, companies and their journeys to get to their current positions.

Steel Street

We had been looking for a community building for years, and when Steel Street came up - it was absolutely perfect for our needs, but needed A LOT of work. We couldn't afford to rent our office and the building at the same time, so we had a very quick turnaround to make it work. Karbon helped us in numerous ways, most notably by providing the 30% funds needed for the grant to get new windows, and by providing us with help form their sub contractors to provide paint and decorators, and new electrical fitting. We are truly grateful for this, and would never have been able to get established in the building so quickly without their help!

This is just a small cross section of the background to Building Self-Belief CIO & Karbon Homes’ collaborative community based work, and we hope that such collaborations continue into the future.