NAME OF ORGANISATION: BF Adventure
LOCATION: Cornwall
YEAR FOUNDED: 1987
ABOUT: BF Adventure is an outdoor education and activities centre in Cornwall that works with disadvantaged and vulnerable young people, implementing their key aims of developing self-esteem and life skills and encouraging a sense of empowerment.
INVESTMENT PURPOSE: The investment was used to install the South West’s first Via Ferrata, helping to advance the company’s tourism and leisure sector income stream.
INVESTMENT AMOUNT: £150,000
DATE OF INVESTMENT: February 2020
SOURCE OF INVESTMENT: South West SITR Fund
IMPACT: Education & Learning, Health, Wellbeing & Social Care
ABOUT: BF Adventure is an outdoor education and activities centre in Cornwall that works with disadvantaged and vulnerable young people, implementing its key aims of developing self-esteem and life skills and encouraging a sense of empowerment. BF Adventure supports around 4,000 young people every year, helping them to overcome social, educational and employment barriers by offering a range of programmes such as school residentials, National Citizen Service (NCS) and charity programmes.
The charity programmes, which focus on building life skills, provide more than 200 young people who have learning or physical disabilities and mental health needs with specialist long-term support each year. BF Adventure has an incredible participant recommendation rate of 100%.
PURPOSE OF INVESTMENT: The investment from the South West SITR Fund was on-lent from BF Adventure to Via Ferrata Cornwall, BF Adventure’s social enterprise trading arm. This investment was used to install the South West’s first Via Ferrata, helping to advance the company’s tourism and leisure sector income stream.
Their Via Ferrata, ‘Iron Stairway’, which opened in July 2020, consists of a 70 metre long single strand of wire, suspended 20 metres above a water-filled quarry. All profits made from Via Ferrata Cornwall are recycled back into BF Adventure, supporting the work that it does with disadvantaged and vulnerable young people.
Adrian Richards, BF Adventure’s CEO: “We’re excited to have launched Via Ferrata Cornwall, the first ever Via Ferrata in the South West! This high adrenaline activity gives people the chance to journey across old granite quarries over twenty metres high, pushing their limits, overcoming fears and focusing their minds on an epic and unforgettable adventure. As a Community Interest Company, all profits go straight towards BF Adventure, a charity supporting local disadvantaged children and young people. Helping them on a journey of change, it uses its beautiful sixty-acre site of heathland, woodland and flooded quarries to enable them to identify their own social, emotional and physical barriers and choose their own challenges to overcome these.”
Leila Sharland, Senior Investment Manager at Resonance: “The BF Adventure investment is an exciting opportunity to bring a new adrenalin activity to Cornwall which will provide a fresh income stream to an excellent Cornish charity - and its Social Enterprise arm - which has been supporting young people from across the county for decades. It has been great to work with a team who are so dedicated to improving lives and who have the vision to make the most out of their site. I am really looking forward to seeing the Via Feratta in action, but they may have a job convincing me to go on there as I am not very good with heights!”
Resonance Limited is a company registered in England and Wales no. 04418625
Resonance Impact Investment Limited, a subsidiary of Resonance Limited, is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Firm number 588462.
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