Hi, I’m Mark Cowling, founder of Third Space Bolton, a charity aiming to inspire, unite and support young people across Bolton.

I spent my teenage years not far from here.  I was lucky, I had a best friend, a good youth group, I did ok at school and my family stayed together.  But there’s so much I wish I could have told my younger self!

There’s a famous African proverb that’s says “it takes a village to raise a child”.  I get that now.  We need help from people outside our own families, who have real wisdom.  They can be old or they can be young.  What they have in common is they are overcomers.  They know how difficult life can be and they’ve worked through it somehow.  These are the people I still want to learn from.  These are the people I could of done with listening to when I was a teenager.

So…Third Space is about two things;

• we want to plug you in to spaces where you can listen and be listened to so that life may go well for you.
• as Mohammed Ali said “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” The longer I live, the more I get that.  There will always be somebody less fortunate than yourself, and there will always be someone who needs the hand that you can offer. Third Space is about joining hands together in Bolton.  Especially so we might leave the next generation in a better place.