News & Views

Paul Sanderson completed DNA in 1991-1992 and is presently employed by the international Charity Spurgeons Child Care as there Regional Development Manger in the South of England. His role is to develop community projects that responded to local need in partnership with relevant agencies.

His year in DNA helped cement his passion to see communities transformed by putting Gods love into action through creative, relevant and life changing projects and activities.

Half of his time is spend working for the Salvation Army doing the same role in there London and the South East region.

In 1996 Paul moved from London to Littlehampton, West Sussex to set up the WIRE project.

Working on the most deprived housing estate in the county Paul quickly established vibrant, creative and educational actives that responded to the needs of children, young people and there families. The project grew thanks to a great team of volunteers. Soon more funding was attracted to enable the employment of a youth worker. This quickly snowballed with funding secured for posts including, Parents and Families support worker, female Youth Worker, Drugs Inclusion Worker and several sessional workers running different activity groups. Over the period of 9 years that Paul led the WIRE he raised nearly £1million from different funders for different pieces of work.

One example of a successful ongoing piece of work is the Festival of Wick. This week long gathering of all ages in the community has grown and grown. Now in its 8 year the Festival attracts over 5000 people with 160 volunteers and a budget of £22,000. The Festival was born out of ideas and events Paul was involved in during his DNA year. Bringing together the best of what he saw in an action packed year Paul has been able to take the ideas he learned and put them to work in communities across the country.

Paul has been invited into different locations over the years to establish similar works relevant to the local community. These projects are still going strong in Crawly, Bognor Regis and Brighton with new projects in development in Storrington, Oxford , Shoreham and recently Herne Bay .

Paul has also had the privilege throughout his youth work carer to work with Children and young people in America , Mexico , Switzerland , Denmark , South Africa , Kenya and Romania . This international perspective was also apart of what DNA taught Paul.

DNA has helped Paul to learn to love the challenges that life brings and it gave him a real passion to see those young people that don’t often have much in life discover within themselves skills and talents that can change the world.

Paul was recently awarded an MBE for his services to youth in the Queens Birthday Honours list.