Due to real-life experiences of our founder, we identified not enough individuals are being equipped with a basic skill set to keep themselves feeling safe, having lack of ability to identify and process their feelings, thoughts and behaviours to move forward on their life journey and reaching their potential.

PBs is a practical down to earth approach relating to feeling safe, equipping people with a skill set to keep themselves feeling safe throughout their life journey. We're a grassroots organisation, founded in 2014 in Coventry, that has built a respectful reputation with existing partners, but most importantly with our beneficiaries and families that we work with.

Challenge

We engage with the hardest-to-reach people due to their lack of engagement with education, statutory services, and broken-down relationships within their family structures and trauma. COV believes ‘we all have the right to feel safe’ and ‘we can talk with someone about anything even if it is awful or small’, therefore we provide a wrap-around, consistent model of support throughout services.

Due to real-life experiences of our founder, we identified not enough individuals are being equipped with a basic skill set to keep themselves feeling safe, having lack of ability to identify and process their feelings, thoughts and behaviours to move forward on their life journey and reaching their potential.

Solution

The passion of Creative Optimistic Visions is to positively influence the life choices of children, young people and adults who are increasingly vulnerable of being subjected to victimisation and abuse, including support the professionals who work with them via our training and services.

Our projects are delivered through the lens of the Protective Behaviours Process (PBs), which educates and empowers individuals around their right to feel safe, enabling them to become their first line of self-defence. Thus, using a simple, inclusive flexible and effective approach, we provide a skill set that enables individuals to identify what feeling safe feels like - increasing their self-confidence/esteem - and effective decision making.

COV uniqueness is two-fold, firstly directors of COV have real-life experience of victimisation and abuse, thus enhancing our ability building rapport and encouraging our service users to work with us. We empathise and understand the people we work with.

Secondly, we are unique in utilising Protective Behaviours, we are the only trainers within Coventry and Warwickshire endorsed by The Protective Behaviours Consortium, delivering accredited training. Our projects are innovative, ethical and robust.

Revenue Model

Investment was for the purpose of securing a salary for two full-time members of staff and approximately 5 volunteers, in turn increasing service delivery and social impact, generating sustainable revenue from sales of services rather than reliant on grant funding. The investment supported securing an additional unit to deliver our services. 

The investment secured a salary for the founding director, as well as appointing three part-time staff. This enabled our delivery of services to expand, growing the business profile as well as generating our own cohorts of individuals rather than working with service users accessing partnering services. This investment supported the creation of our Theory of Change Model, in turn supporting funding applications, as well as reaching more beneficiaries. Investment supported the development of services, creating a more robust offer to business and our local community.

The revenue model was based on increasing sales of services to public and voluntary organisations as well as increasing staff capacity to deliver services with forecasting grant applications. We received:

• Grant amount of £20,000 from UnLtd
• £19,500 debt investment from Key Fund
• £500 family investment at 0% interest

Impact

Individuals that have engaged with COV have enjoyed the experience, learning about important life skills to enable them to keep themselves feeling safe. They have increased their self-confidence and improved their wellbeing, feeling more able to be included in society, be resilient and able to problem solve while recognising their right and the right of others to feel safe.

The work that C.O.V. does has a great impact not only on the individual young people but on their communities too. 

COV is able to engage with people in a way that many other services cannot. It is important that this work can continue and help more individuals to feel safe and get more out of a life without violence.

Maria Huffer, Director of Protective Behaviours Consortium

I met Stacey-Jade Mason, Founding Director, in October 2016 and from the very outset I could see her passion and drive for making a difference for people who have suffered from various forms of victimisations.

Stacey is the driver behind C.O.V which is a small enterprise reaching out to their beneficiaries who include young people lacking in self-confidence, disengaged from mainstream education, victims of abuse including Child Sexual Exploitation. It is a credit to Stacey that she had the courage to apply for loan finance which has given her the opportunity to develop and grow her enterprise with the real benefit of allowing C.O.V to deliver their very valuable services to the people who need it most.

- Andy Croft, Key Fund Investment Manager