The Pearl Exchange supports young adults aged 18–35 across rural Cornwall, where isolation, poor access to services, and declining mental health are major challenges. Our project, Roots & Resilience, aims to transform young people’s wellbeing through free creative workshops, skills-building opportunities, and trauma-informed counselling.

We created this programme in response to the urgent need for early intervention and meaningful connection in one of the UK’s most deprived regions. By offering accessible support, community, and creative expression, we hope to reduce loneliness, build confidence, and empower young adults to imagine a more hopeful, stable future.

We will begin the Roots & Resilience project in January 2026 by launching both strands of activity: our creative workshop programme and our counselling provision.  Our first month will focus on outreach to isolated young adults across North Cornwall and Devon, ensuring new participants are aware of the free support available.

We will begin scheduling the first block of creative and skills-based workshops, delivered by our professional facilitators and co-designed with young adults to ensure relevance and accessibility. Alongside this, we will start allocating counselling spaces, offering up to nine sessions per person with our trauma-informed counsellors to provide early intervention for those in crisis. We will also be implementing a new triage system to ensure timely support to those assessed as most at risk during the referral process. 

Operationally, January will include refining monitoring tools (surveys, CORE-10 assessments, attendance tracking) and holding the first of the year's advisory board meetings with our volunteer board, which will enable us to gather feedback on the sort of workshops our participants would find helpful for the year ahead. This start-up phase ensures that participants can quickly access support, build connections, and begin developing the confidence, skills, and resilience the project is designed to foster.