Centre 33 are a local charity supporting young people aged 8-25 across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. We provide free and confidential services in various locations, including in schools, community buildings and at our five hubs where young people can drop in without an appointment.

76% of the young people that attend our drop-ins come to discuss mental health and most come with more than one issue.

One of the ways in which we can support young people aged 13-25 is by providing counselling in our community hubs. We offer 6 sessions per young person and each year approximately 400 young people are referred into this service.

We know there are young people with mental health needs who would benefit from counselling. We have a team of excellent counsellors but we don't have the funding to meet this demand.

This means we have a long waiting list and the most common feedback we receive from young people is that they would like shorter waiting times to receive counselling.

Winter can be an especially difficult time for some young people where feelings of isolation, relationship difficulties, financial pressures and housing problems can be exacerbated.

How you can help young people this Christmas

This Christmas we are asking you to donate to Centre 33 to allow us to offer more free counselling sessions to young people to ensure that they receive the help they need when they need it so that they can thrive and become the person they want to be.

Each counselling session costs from £50. We are aiming to raise £3,000 which would allow us to provide an additional 60 sessions, supporting up to a further 15 young people.

Last Christmas we were so grateful to all of our supporters for raising over £3,000 to allow 60 young carers to go ice skating and enjoy just being children rather than being carers.