One person pointed us to The Starfish Story, as she thought it fit with our ethos.
It can sometimes feel a little overwhelming when you think about how many young people there are in the UK. There are over 20,000 schools which have a combined total of over 7,000,000 students. Add to that the fact that there are more than 2,000,000 university students and you really start to see the scale of the task facing any organisation which wants to support that age range.
At Soli, we aren’t afraid of those numbers but we understand that it means that despite our best efforts, there will always be young people who slip through the cracks. That thought can sometimes be a little demoralising. That’s why it was such a morale boost when one of our potential assessors mentioned the connection to The Starfish Story.
We believe the story below truly encapsulates what we are trying to do. If each one of our services can support people in need, even if it’s just a small percentage of those daunting figures, then we’ll be doing out bit.
‘One day a man was walking along the beach, when he noticed a boy hurriedly picking up and gently throwing things into the ocean.
Approaching the boy, he asked, “Young man, what are you doing?”
The boy replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”
The man laughed to himself and said, “Don’t you realise there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make any difference!”
After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it into the surf.
Then, smiling at the man, he said, “I made a difference to that one.”