Our passion for child wellbeing lies at the heart of everything we do. It all began in 2000 when the charity was founded as the Kent and Medway Walking Bus Group. Our goal was to tackle two major health challenges – childhood obesity and air pollution – in one fell swoop. Today, KM Charity Team (KMCT) walk-to-school programmes remove hundreds of thousands of school-run car journeys from the road each year. As a result, children embrace a more active lifestyle, learn road safety, and arrive at school alert and ready to learn. Plus, of course, there are fewer air-polluting cars jostling for space at the school gates during drop-off and pick-up hours – creating a safer environment in every sense of the word.

The success of this initiative soon garnered the support of local businesses, councils and schools who approached KMCT to develop further programmes that addressed some of the ever changing issues facing children and young people in our community. Buster’s Book Club, launched in 2014, quickly became a core part of our work with schools. It creates a real buzz around books, with millions of reading hours eagerly notched up every year. Children don’t realise they are developing their language, vocabulary, imagination and emotional intelligence – they’re too busy having fun! Annual initiatives include Teacher of the Year Awards and Green School Awards – to recognise and share best practice – along with science contest The Big STEM Challenge, and cookery challenge Young Cooks.

KMCT is now the leading charity across Kent that is dedicated to giving children and young people the ‘Knowledge and Motivation’ to be the best they can be. KMCT is a charity that doesn’t just try and ‘fix’ young people after things have gone wrong; we are dedicated to working with them at an early stage in their lives to help prevent problems from becoming issues in the first place.

Our aims and objectives vary from programme to programme but everything we do has at its core the desire to achieve the following outcomes at a minimum:

• Increased knowledge and motivation
• Increased sense of achievement and confidence
• Increased life skills and sense of community belonging

In addition, we strive to make all of our programmes accessible and inclusive regardless of gender, race and financial situation, adapting programmes and offering support to meet the needs of participating schools, parents and children.

As an independent charity, we understand only too well the challenges of securing enough funding to survive. And we want to help our schools and their wider communities to have the resources they need to boost children and their families’ wellbeing and future prospects. So we decided right from the start to adopt a ‘collaborative fundraising’ approach. This means we take on all the costs associated with organising fundraising events – staffing, resources, promotion, stewarding, and so on – and we share the funds generated. Each participant names their chosen charity or volunteer group, from a local PTA to a major national cause, which then receives 70 per cent of sponsorship raised by that individual.

Together, we really do make a difference and we hope you will join us on our journey.