Its Trustee Week – so we’ll be doing a few blogs from and about our trustees! To kick off the week we’ve got Kate Brown, our Chair. Kate has been a trustee for more than 10 years of which the last 2 as Chair and is involved in many aspects of our work. For Trustee Week, we asked her to say a few words herself.
A small charity like Basis is extremely hard to sustain without the dedication and passion of Trustees and Kate has supported Basis through many achievements and challenging times showing unstinting commitment to the charity and services for women in sex work and sexually exploited girls and young women. She has led the charity through challenging times of big cuts in statutory funding – always seeking to ensure best interest of women and girls in anything that we do. Our reach is now beyond just Leeds as we have recently established the Time2 Project in N. Yorkshire.
She has contributed to research, at times offering her expertise pro-bono, highlighting key issues affecting female sex workers in Leeds and girls at risk of or experiencing sexual exploitation, spoken at conferences to raise awareness of such issues. She’s also arranged and spoken on television and featured in newspapers to raise awareness of Basis Yorkshire work with women and girls, often of her own initiative. She supports the women and girls that the charity works with in other ways as well – she is a regular member of our outreach team that goes out twice weekly in the evening to reach out to sex workers in Leeds. Over the past few months she has been working on a research project involving Young People, working closely with young people supported by Basis and other organisations resulting in a number of resources under the name of: Breaking Through and Movin
g on from CSE – which even made it onto the Today Program last week!
She’s also happy to support any fundraising efforts raising essential income which for a small charity focusing on politically sensitive issues – in fact of her own accord she has a led the Basis Great North Swim team for several years now – motivating others to take part as well as donate, while speaking to the press at the same time! about why she feels so passionately about the most socially excluded , stigmatised and vulnerable women and girls in Yorkshire.
More info on and from our Trustees to follow during the week!
