Alex Brooks-Johnson Trustee and SBP Resourcing Lead

Alex has spent many years working in the third sector and specialises in funding support for charities.

His interest in education includes working with a number of co-operative schools, special education and outdoor education. He has a young family, which probably means he will take even more interest in education in future!

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His experience is of real value to The School Bus Project, helping to develop sustainability and build towards our longer term goal of creating a model for replication wherever it has value for learning communities.

Bethany Dill European Programme Advisor

Bethany hails from Ohio and has a distinguished academic career, in addition to extensive experience in the field of refugee programmes and development work.  She spent two years working in camps in the Lebanon and has been instrumental in building up our relationship with Action for Education - our main partner in Greece.

Bethany has worked on Samos and Chios, helping AfE with their work to establish a new multi-purpose centre for children and young people, with facilities ranging from the Barbers shop, coffee bar, showers and personal care facilities to the learning provision and sports/recreation spaces.

Chris Beddoe Trustee Advisor

Specialist in safeguarding

Chris has spent many years working in the field of safeguarding, child protection and campaigning for refugee rights.

We are delighted that she has joined our small board of Trustees, bringing a wealth of relevant experience and strong values to join the SBP team.

Jade Lee: SBP Partnership Lead

Developing UK projects and profile for SBP

Jade has joined us after working with the Refugee Childrens Centre project for two years.

She has significant expertise in training and curriculum development, specialising in early years and pre-school provision.

Her role includes liaison with our partnership programmes in Greece and developing SBP's UK partnership programmes such as SchoolFriends and UNIfied - the university friendship group who support our work and initiate additional activity in their own right.

Jon O’Connor Lead Trustee and SBP Project Lead

Project Lead: logistics and organisation; SBP Safeguarding Lead

Jon is an education management specialist, with a passion for ensuring that there is good access to every possible learning opportunity and that aspirations are high. He is the National Director of the Cooperative Schools Network.

Jon leads on the longer term planning work for The School Bus Project, along with the other Trustees and the members of the team.

School Friends Ambassadors: Annette Ayling, Catherine Healy, Cheryl Andrews

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Our SchoolFriends Ambassadors work to promote The School Bus Project and the issues we are involved in through a programme of talks, workshops and visits to schools in the UK.

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Each member of the SFA team covers a region or area and we are always looking for more to join the team!

Simon Murphy, Trustee and Education Partnerships lead

DJ, Educator, percussionist and lots more....

Simon is a Trustee with the portfolio for education partnerships and communications: he supports SBP with our systems for data management, website development and much more besides.

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Simon's typical working week often includes being in a school to undertake performance management for the Head Teacher one day, running his latest mix for a club in London through the small hours,  finding some quality time with his family, and another day which is likely to be crunching down a new software system he is writing for partnership working.  

He says that he joined SBP because he was drawn to the education and the humanitarian characteristics of the project.

Simon and Pete | SBP Vehicle conversion team

Making buses into mobile learning resources

Simon, Pete, Neil.... and others have joined SBP in the last six months to take on the vital fitting out of our vehicles when they work in different situations.

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In 2016, we were working with some younger children as well as teenagers and young parents in the Jungle Camp.

The Big Yellow Bus has since provided workshop space for training and other work; it was refitted in Summer 2017 for a second spell of service in Calais. The main groups we worked with over the Winter of 2017 were teenagers and young adults, so a different layout was installed in a record breaking four weeks!

We now have a fleet of three vehicles; a second double decker (Big Blue Bus) designed for working with younger children and their parents and a Little Green Bus, working in Northern France for outdoor spaces during the Summer.

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The image here shows some meeting points for refugees in and around Calais where we are working at the moment.

William Bolton Fundraising Lead

William simply got in touch in response to our advert for new people and offered to help - he's been doing a great job looking at how we can generate more income and do more fantastic work in the next year or two.

SBP Lead Educators & Programme Advisors

With links to Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Vienna and further afield - SBP is truly an international team!

SBP works with a number of talented and positive people who help us to continuously shape and refine our work.

In each case, we work through discussion between the local team and the UK based project leadership team, to build a portfolio of work which can be adapted and used again in a range of contexts.

Our core curriculum model is based on a cycle of themes around the central idea of  "Here and Now". For many migrants, refugees or displaced people, it is a simple and effective starting point for discussion, conversation and relationship. 

Our priority is working with children and young people, but we also support adult learning and development.

So we have two models: one for "developed learners" with a lot of experience of education processes and one for "developing learners" who have very little experience and may still be learning through play or need a very informal approach to support their needs.

How about you?

Why not join SBP?

You're passionate about learning, with a strong sense of natural justice and human rights.

You have skills you want to put to good use.... so what are you waiting for? Come and help us!