Platform 51

meet the women we work with

Sherelle

Now 18, Sherelle was bullied and for a while stopped talking to anyone, now she’s working her way towards a fascinating future.

'I moved schools when I was 13. An older girl said she was going to stab me and set my hair alight and stuff like that. Even though I’d told the teachers it got worse, so finally mum pulled me out of that school. But it left me feeling really small and silly. The school said that the bully was ‘troubled’ but they seemed to be more concerned about her than how I was feeling. So I stopped talking to people. There seemed to be no point. I felt like no one listened. Starting a new school was really daunting too. I hardly knew anyone.

'But gradually Platform 51 helped me get my confidence back. It took a while; they encouraged me to try lots of different things out of my comfort zone, and I met new people, nice people. So I keep coming. It’s made a big difference in my life.

Over the years I’ve done loads of courses and programmes at Platform 51 and now I’m helping to run them. Most of them are about self-image and becoming independent. One was called Miss Independent and it dealt with the transition between schools and college. I’m training to be a peer mentor so I can help the younger girls. Another course was called Me, myself and I and it was about how you see yourself, how the media sees people and how to make yourself feel better through exercise and diet. There is a pressure on young women to look a certain way, a way that most of us can’t ever achieve even if we wanted to. We looked at the dimensions of Barbie, and how it was not real, actually impossible to be like that.

'At college now I’m doing applied science; I’d like to go to university to study forensic science. I was interested in becoming a pathologist, or perhaps scenes of crime officer, but now I’m more interested in the psychology side of it, criminology, why people do what they do… noticing the little things and putting it all together to solve the problem. I watch crime drama on TV, but I sit there shouting at the TV ‘but you’re doing it wrong! You should have your hair tied back!"

Find out how your support can help young women like Sherelle here.