You may or may not know that Mile End Climbing Wall is maintained by our own charity – Development Through Challenge.

DTC is a youth development charity that aims to give local young people development opportunities through challenging activities. We spend the majority of our time working with local schools, youth groups, pupil referral units and youth offending teams on programs ranging from GCSE climbing through to AQA awards and tailor made programmes for the social and physical development of young people.

This means that we are a Not-for-profit organisation and every penny we earn goes back into the infrastructure and programme of the centre.

Part of our ethos as a charity is to offer good value affordable climbing for all and so we always try to make sure that our entry prices and courses are affordable and competitive. We also keep our team and coffee really cheap too!

With this in mind we ask people to consider donating their 50p locker deposits to us as a simple way of us getting a bit more cash to build new walls. Donations so far have helped to build the cave area, update the board room and have recently helped with the costs of the fantastic new overhanging walls in the main room.

50p may not seem a lot to one person but over the weeks and months they really mount up and are a great way for us to help subsidise the work we do and the service we give to all our customers.