Last Week's bloggerage

Bloggering 2

G'day bloggerites, sorry it's been a little while since my last blog, but it has been a very busy week!
However, it has been an interesting week to!

I had a meeting with Ant Sayles on Monday & found out about a fund for young people which I hadn't come across yet - the Youth Opportunities fund, which can help youth groups with capital & revenue funding. The only stipulation is the emphasis on young people participating in the bid - realistically they have to fill it out & be involved with all the stages of the bids - fantastic! Well a minor complication is that the bids needed to be in on Wednesday (i.e. 2 days ago) so speed was of the essence, this balanced with trying to finish an essay for Uni on management - d'oh! I managed to finish off the essay (yaaaay) then printed off 3 copies of the form to take to the Tuesday Group.

I had a bit of a chat with the Tuesday crew & explained the importance of the opportunity & about the speed of the response necessary. I'm pleased to say that they took the challenge & completed a form for both revenue & capital - for 7900 & 8000 respectively! Not bad for a student youthworker methinks lol!

Also had my last lecture days on Wednesday & Thursday. Wednesday was scary, yet informative - public speaking skills! Something which really scares me normally......& still does! But now I know how to prepare for my talks etc. Coolies!!!

Thursday, now that was a different kettle of Tuna! Ian M's opposite number in Peterborough - Paul turned up with loads of games & ides for group sessions for young people. We all thought he was nuts to bring the amount of stuff that he brought with him. However, the stuff he brought was very very cool: uni-hock, parachutes, scruples, hundreds & hundreds mini-beanbags, a giant inflatable cube, etc. & best of all he let us play - yaaaaaaaaaaay - be teenagers & small children for the morning lol! I don't think anyone got bored of throwing beanbags at each other all morning!

Fun as it was though, it still really challenged me to think about my own youthwork & what games we play. They may be fun(ish), but I think that with some more fun (youth-friendly) resources I might be able to enhance my youthwork practice.

Also on Thursday(this IS turning out to be a bit of a BIG blog!) I presented the funding bid to the PCC & their monthly meeting - nice! But people were both surprised & happy about it though - win!

OK (nearly there) Friday had lunchtime club in the Primary School in North Leigh, which went fine - we were rehearsing for the play at Christmas. However, the evening - now that was fun....kinda!

Rewind (my Friday night, open youth group) was both good, & bad! Good because I informed this group about the funding bid, but also because we talked about an article in the local newsletter (Nor Lie News) which had a report from the Parish Council criticising young people in North Leigh over them hanging out in the park next to the Primary School. The discussions were really interesting, & the group decided to look at their main hang-out area (skate park) which is currently unusable because it's covered in glass. The decision which came out of these discussions was to possible do some form of social action in the new year!

However, there was also some bad news as the leadership is going to be severely reduced in numbers, with the loss of both Kathy & now Katie from the Friday group.

Simon, signing off!