IMPACT: ABDUL SAMAD

Success4All helps children and young people in the North East prepare for a brighter future. Its impact can be measured in the success stories of the children & young people who access its services.

Here Cllr Abdul Samad shares his impact story.

HOW IT STARTED

My involvement with Success4All started around 2011-12 when Success4All was in the Millin Centre.

I started attending as a tutee.

I was 12, maybe 13.

At first, I started attending on an ad-hoc basis, but when I saw the progress I was making, I ramped up my attendance and did it as much as possible.

For me, it was the sciences and English that I struggled with the most. I can say for sure that without Success4All’s help I probably wouldn’t have passed my science subjects.

Caroline also helped me quite a lot when it came to French. I remember her spending several days going over coursework with me.

FROM TUTEE TO TUTOR

I became a volunteer tutor when I was 15.

I started supporting primary education but for me, secondary education was way more fascinating, so I helped a lot with history and other subjects.

Of course, there was quite a big difference between being a tutee and a tutor.

As a tutor, I realised that you can’t teach everyone in the same manner and you can’t teach everyone in the same style because everyone learns in their own unique way. Yes, a lot of people will learn in the same type of way, but they won’t learn at the same level.

You need to be able to tailor teaching to each individual person. It’s not just a group thing, it’s an individual thing as well.

WINNING THE DIANA AWARD

At first, I was surprised because I didn’t know what the Diana award was, and I’d never heard of it in the past.

I remember I was in school during my A Levels. Caroline and Busola came in and I was shocked. I assumed it was just another recruitment drive but normally they tell me about it in advance.

And then she came in and presented the award.

I was a bit embarrassed. All my friends egged me on, as you can imagine, but it was great. It was just a real honour. I didn’t expect it.

The whole volunteering for me was purely volunteering. It wasn’t to buff up my CV. It wasn’t so it looked good on a university application or anything. For me, it was just something that really helped me in the past and I could see how much it helped children and I just wanted to be that person that helped as well.

To get that award on top of that was just such an amazing feat considering it was nothing I ever expected. It wasn’t anything I thought I deserved or anything at the time.

For everything she’s (Caroline) managed to offer me, for everything Success4All has made me do, I am eternally grateful.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS

There have been quite a few memorable moments.

I worked with kids that didn’t really want to go on to A-levels because they felt they were just not going to pass.

So when I saw them getting the A’s, getting the b’s, getting C’s, getting into college, getting into university, it was just really nice, especially considering six months ago, a year ago, they didn’t feel like they had the ability, and they didn’t feel like they had the opportunity to pass. To see them progress to that stage was just an amazing feat.

Many of the tutees didn’t speak English as their first language, so subjects like English were harder for them to understand because of the language barrier. Helping them get good grades in English was a really good achievement.

LASTING IMPACT

When I did my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, both dissertations focused on education institutes and how we have failed as a society and as a country to develop education in the right manner.

Success4All for me has opened the door and shown me how bad education is in this country and how we don’t treat it with the respect it truly deserves.

If I’m being honest with everything, the education I have achieved, and a lot of my achievements outside, a lot of it is due to success4All and it’d be rude of me to not acknowledge how much of an impact they’ve had in my life.

Caroline and the organisation helped me develop into the person I am today.

She pushed me in the right direction and she pushed me to do some amazing things. A lot of what I’ve managed to achieve and who I’ve become is down to her and the organisation.

I know I’ve volunteered a lot and I’ve done Summer Schools with them but I don’t ever feel like there’s enough I can do to repay how much they’ve done for me in that same sense.