This week marked one year of Step Up. One whole year! If you had told our founding volunteers everything we have achieved within one year, we would have thought you were dreaming. But we are so pleased to share and celebrate with you.

We kicked off the celebrations with Volunteers Week 2024 – do check out our blog about that week here. Utha hosted a small brunch in London for some of our London based supporters and community. We then celebrated officially on our birthday, Monday 10^th June 2024, with a virtual event led by Ben, our Founder and Chair, along with our newly appointed Vice Chairs: Elaine, Christine, Utha and Brooke. We were joined by supporter and amplifier, Hannah Wilson who gave a keynote speech on networking. We will continue these celebrations until the end of the month with our Team Day on Saturday 29^th June.

Therefore, let’s celebrate and reflect on our year so far. We will also be sharing our Impact Report by the end of the month detailing more in-depth the work of Step Up.

Our Events

These have been the cornerstone of our ever-growing network. We have held four virtual events, three face-to-face events, seven social events and one collaboration event. This was the riskiest part of our network, lying awake the night before wondering if people would come. In which, we’ve grown and grown, and more people are attending more than once. We’ve had fantastic speakers and volunteers leading such wonderful content for our community. We are very open at the beginning of each event, we state each event is a trial, to see which format works, we have been pleased to reflect based on the impact everyone has given. Do check out our Eventbrite and our calendar for our events for 2024/25 (the majority of next year’s events are much smaller affairs, so do make sure to get your tickets in advance).

Our Content

We were born through Twitter (as it was called then). Since then, we have rapidly grown on LinkedIn, continued to curate content for our website (also including our blog and directory), we have been gifted a space on Mighty Networks (by the wonderful DiverseEd team) and we are creating more video content on our YouTube channel. Behind the scenes, we are currently planning the launch of our podcast for later in the 2024/25 academic year; and we have also had talks on other social media channels, building capacity and knowledge through our YouTube channel, and the even the publishing of a book. Ultimately, we have tried to design something for everyone. The best place to start is the website and go from there.

Our Partnerships

As one of our five ways of working is collaborating, we have always aimed to work with and amplify the work of other organisations. Furthermore, we want to act as a signpost within the educational networking sphere to other organisations who our community would benefit from engaging with. We have been pleased to work particularly close with Teach First, Male Childcare and Teaching Jobs, London Screen Academy and Diverse Educators to name a few. We are really pleased to have collaborated with many other organisations including the ones on the image below. Thank you for all your support and our partnerships team are looking forward to working with you further this forthcoming year, refining our collaborative work.

Our Offer

Over the course of the year, we have reflected on our offer. Behind the scenes we are currently exploring coaching partnerships for the benefit of our community. A key part we are proud to offer is our Diverse Leaders Bursary, which we have launched with the support of and collaboration with Teach First. We look forward to reading through the applications and more details can be found in the our offer section of the website.

Our Strategy

A week after our launch in 2023, the founding volunteer team met in-person to shape our network strategy and vision. This was based on Ben’s reading of the book ‘Traction’ by Gino Wickman; during the day we mapped out the first three years for the network, defined our core values and vision, and decided on our volunteer roles and responsibilities. This year, we now have a team of 29, who will be meeting in a hybrid format to review the year and plan forward. We look forward to sharing our plans with you by the end of the month.

Our Community

We have been pleased to see the ever-growing community we have created. Each event, more and more people signing up, volunteering, following and amplifying on social media. We have been pleased to see all the wonderful feedback. We are looking forward to continuing to grow and meet more of you in person. You really are helping shape our organisation and offer.

Our Impact

This is just some of the impact we’ve had:

We look forward to next year, to make even more.

Our Team

We could not have achieved any of this without our wonderful team and our visionary founder and chair, Ben. Considering we’ve grown from six to 29 in the space of the year speaks volumes. The fact we have moved from unregistered grassroots network to community interest company and social enterprise, also demonstrates the grown and importance of our organisation. We have built a fantastic culture as a team and look forward to our next step up as an organisation and network. Thank you for all you do.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Step Up! Here’s to another successful 12 months.