Red2Green has created a new and special way of joining our clients in recognising and celebrating their achievements - we've called it 'Stepping Stones'. We like to mark not only their formal achievements, such as exam certificates, but also the individual progresses they make along the way.

We have identified three key factors which we believe increase our clients' independent living skills, and ultimately their chances of employment if they are looking for work. These are:

• self esteem
• social skills
• practical skills

The activities of each Red2Green project contribute to at least one of these key aspects.

As part of Stepping Stones we have broken these down further into eight individual steps, which we developed into a pathway to employment, training or personal development. The eight Stepping Stones stages we encourage our clients to follow are:

1. improving their self esteem
2. a personal development plan
3. job application training (CV development and interview skills)
4. skill enhancement
5. formal qualifications
6. volunteering experience
7. work tasters
8. securing a job or apprenticeship.

These steps are a circular path which clients may enter and leave and retrace as their situations change, rather than a ladder of progression. Because the path is circular, clients can move onto further steps when they are ready. We also recognise that not all of our clients will achieve all of these steps.

Clients on some projects already build up portfolios of their Open College Network coursework, such as those at Aspirations and Red2Greenhouse for example, but we wanted to develop a portfolio for every client across every project, in which we and they could record their progress. So we ordered new portfolios, and designed attractive section dividers behind which is held the supporting documentation for that particular step. These section dividers are designed to 'stand alone'; some clients may only ever have one of the sections in their folders, while others may build up evidence under each stepping stone.