Stephen Yip, who still runs the Charity to this day, founded KIND in 1975. From the very beginning our ethos has always been to work with disadvantaged and deprived children and their families from across Liverpool and Merseyside, providing activities, opportunities and experiences that show them that that they and life do have more to offer, that they and life can be different.

It’s also about allowing our children the opportunity to create some wonderful, happy and positive memories of their childhood - memories that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

For the first 22 years our work primarily consisted of our annual Christmas Appeal, run from our office in Liverpool and Residential breaks at centres based across the UK.

Between 1975-1981 we used the YMCA National Centre as our residential base for taking children away. The operation was part-time and run on a voluntary basis with no paid staff.

Then in 1982 we were able to purchase our first property: two large cottages on the Quarriers Estate in the Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, Scotland. We now moved to a full-time basis providing weeklong residential breaks between February and November at this new centre.

In 1987, because of a redevelopment of the Quarriers Estate, we purchased and renovated a small farm in Howwood, Renfrewshire, Scotland, which became our new residential home for the next 4 years.

In 1992, we purchased and redeveloped the derelict 260-acre, Balbeg Estate in Straiton, Scotland into our own purpose built children’s residential activity centre. The centre was run on a year round basis, with, at its height, 18 fulltime staff.

In 1996, after considerable thought we made the decision to scale back our residential programme, look at the expansion of our remit and develop new activities and services that would be based primarily in our home city – Liverpool.

Balbeg remained as our Residential base until 2001, but in 1997, we opened a new centre in Back Canning Street, Liverpool, offering a new year round programme of activities for children and families in addition to our existing services.

In different phases over 26 years we developed our Back Canning Street site into a state of the art, eco friendly centre, dedicated to providing children with activities, services and experiences that helped them to cope with the effects of poverty and disadvantage and reach their potential.

Today we can look back across our history with pride at what we have achieved. But that does not mean that we are resting on our laurels. We are focused firmly on the future and how our vital work with local children and families can continue to develop and flourish.

There are children and families across our region who need our help now more than ever and with the continued backing of our friends we can inspire, empower and support them to create a better, more positive future.

Whether you have supported us for years or are reading about our work for the first time, we hope that you will join us on this very special journey.