On the wall of my study hangs an old cutting from the Lichfield Mercury, dated 11 November 1988.
The headline reads: “Breaking out!”
The page is yellowed now, the photographs are grainy and the print has faded. But it remains one of the things on my wall that means the most to me.
The article tells the story of Breakout Children’s Holidays, a small local charity created by a group of young volunteers to give children from disadvantaged backgrounds the chance to enjoy a summer holiday.
The idea was simple. Children who might otherwise have had little opportunity to travel or spend time away from home could take part in activities such as canoeing, pony trekking, crafts, games and trips to the seaside. They could experience the countryside, make new friends and enjoy the freedom of being somewhere different.
What strikes me most, looking back, is not the scale of the organisation, but the energy and commitment of the people involved.
We were a small group. We did not have large budgets, professional fundraising teams or sophisticated systems. There were holidays to organise, volunteers to recruit and train, money to raise, parents and carers to reassure, and countless practical details to sort out.
People simply took responsibility for whatever needed doing.
Local businesses, trusts and community groups provided support. Volunteers gave their time. Others helped with transport, activities, administration or fundraising. Each contribution was relatively modest, but together they made the holidays possible.
That is often how worthwhile things begin.
Not with a perfect plan or a major funding announcement, but with a few people who notice a need and decide to respond to it.
The newspaper cutting records some of the numbers: the children who attended, the volunteers required and the money that had to be raised for each place. But numbers can only tell part of the story.
They cannot capture the excitement of a child seeing the sea, perhaps for the first time. They cannot measure the confidence gained from trying a new activity, sleeping away from home or discovering that adults outside their immediate family cared about what happened to them.
Nor can they fully describe the effect on the volunteers.
Working together on Breakout taught us that age and experience are not the only things that matter. A group of young people, given encouragement and trusted with real responsibility, can create something of lasting value.
Nearly four decades later, the details have inevitably blurred. I cannot remember every journey, every fundraising event or every problem that had to be solved.
But the central lesson has stayed with me.
Small groups matter.
Volunteers matter.
Local action matters.
And when people combine their time, energy and goodwill around a clear purpose, the result can be far greater than any one of them could have achieved alone.
That old Lichfield Mercury page remains framed on my wall because it is more than a record of something that happened in 1988.
It is a reminder that change often begins quietly, locally and with a handful of people prepared to say: let’s do something.
