Hi Folks,

We are now entering our 20th year of existence. 20 years ago on 23rd April, we opened our doors for the first time, advertised our phone line and began to provide confidential support and information to young women for the first time. Yes, back then our services were only available for young women! The reason for this was because we were part of the rape crisis centre at the time. It took about 2 years for us to separate ourselves from rape crisis and a few more years before we were able to open our services fully to all young people. We got there though!

Starting on 23rd April, we are going to hold an event each month to celebrate our 20th year and we hope that some of you will be able to join us for some, or all, of the events. So far we have dates for 2 events. On the 23rd April at 1pm, we are having a celebration in the Centre with Dr Sarah Nelson as our guest speaker.

On 28th June, at 1pm we are having a V.I.P. DVD reunion. V.I.P. stands for Violence Is Preventable and the DVD's are part of our abuse prevention programme for use in schools and nurseries. We have 8 DVD's and many volunteers over the years have been involved in making these DVD's. Many were kids at the time but have now grown up. We are inviting as many as we can find to come back to the Centre and we will show the DVD's again to remind everyone of how they helped keep generations of kids safe.

Other events are planned right up until our 21st Birthday Bash in 2015. Watch this space.

20 years! That's such a great achievement, especially through the last recession. Many support organisations have folded but now 18u, I hope this agency is still here in another 20 years.