Stephanie Blanksby

Epic Partners

Empowering Positive & Inspirational Change Epic Partners is a registered charity with an emphasis on working within deprived neighbourhoods and making a difference to people's lives by providing them with education, training, and skills development. Epic Partners are based in the heart of St Ann's and Sneinton, both ‘deprived' inner-city wards of Nottingham. Our aim is to support all children, young people, adults, and their families to achieve their aspirations. Although increasing poverty and inequality do have a huge impact on our communities, we want to focus on the incredible resilience, capability, and creativity inherent within our communities. We do not want the areas we work in to be defined solely by broad-brush definitions such as "deprived neighbourhoods" and our staff team work tirelessly to remove such labels across Inner City wards of Nottingham. In response to this Epic Partners works to care for, support, and help families, children and young people thrive and realise their full potential despite the negative perception of the area they live in. This is a significant challenge – the deprivation cannot be ignored altogether, and St Ann's also has some of the highest crime rates nationally. Epic Partners works with the whole family to change the negative perceptions of the area. The Training and Community Education department work with young people and adults with an emphasis on education to make a difference in their search for sustainable employment. Our success in having a direct physical presence for vulnerable people ensures they have at least one trusted person to support them to make positive decisions about behaviour and influence. Our unique approach enables beneficiaries to get involved in employability programmes, non-accredited courses, and creative activities that help reduce the amount of poverty, anti-social behaviour, gang crime, unemployment, and increase social skills, confidence, employment opportunity