School of Hard Knocks - Events

School of Hard Knocks

About us

SOHK exists to support individuals who are facing inequality. We enable meaningful change in participants’ lives through:

High Impact Sport
All of SOHK’s programmes and courses use high-impact sport to physicalise the challenges our participants face. Through the use of high-impact sport, namely rugby, SOHK enables participants to improve confidence, communication skills, commitment, self-control and the ability to work well within a team.

Mentoring
SOHK’s use of high-impact sport works in tandem with the application of group and one-to-one mentoring. Group sessions allow participants to gain valuable insights from both SOHK facilitators and their peers, and gives individuals the opportunity to understand different lived experiences. Each participant is also given one-to-one mentoring with an SOHK specialist to explore personal goals and challenges.

The Power of the Team
SOHK engenders an atmosphere of genuine acceptance which allows long-lasting social bonds to be formed between participants. Our courses and programmes show participants how the individual strengthens the collective and how the collective strengthens the individual; participants are encouraged to maintain their relationships with course-mates once their time at SOHK ends.

The charity was founded in 2012 by Ken Cowen, who created the concept in 2007.

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