Last Thursday we had a Sexual Health Session with young men in the Teviot Centre during the main Thursday night session. We invited a visiting professional from the NHS, with experience in Sexual Health Education. It was a great opportunity to have an adult conversation with the young men, in a safe and structured environment. It was particularly great to have an honest conversation as men together, both young people and volunteers, the subject often carries a lot of bravado and sarcastic comment! The young people seemed to engage, ask questions, and have conversations that we have never had before with these young people.

We had an anonymous box in the youth club that they could ask what ever questions they wanted, the questions were answered by the expert, he did have some rules, like not answering personal questions, which was good because the young people seemed to have taken a keen interest in the sexuality and the underwear of the workers!

It was also good to talk about associated emotional issues that go alongside Sexual Health about how they treat young women and interact with young women, i think we would like to come back to some of theses issues and look at their relationships.

I have some better photographs on the way but this is the paper store at the printing press that prints The Daily Mirror amongst other papers. They use all of this (re-cycled) paper in the course of one week!

So this week (half-term) we took some young people to visit The Trinity Mirror Group. This is the group that owns The Daily Mirror newspaper, the 8th largest newspaper in the world, as well as a variety of other media. It was an amazing opportunity for the young people involved. We started in their head office which covers several floors of One Canada Square (Canary Wharf). We had a tour of the offices and saw the news room and all the other elements that make up a national newspaper. Surrounded by incredible views over London, we had presentations from a Senior Staff Reporter, Head of Sales, Head of Product Management, Head of Legal, and Head of Training and Development. They explained their various roles and each told their story of how they had got to their current position. It was great to hear the variety of routes they had taken. Some had been very academically successful whilst some had struggled at school and had learnt through work experience. What they had all shared was an aspiration and the hard work and determination to pursue it.

After lunch we set off for Watford in a minibus, to visit the printing press. We had a guided tour of the vast building, learning about and seeing first hand, how papers are transformed from words and images on a screen through a series of surprisingly and impressively intricate processes to become the paper that we hold in our hands. It was really fascinating. Again the manager that was showing us around told us his story. He had started just working the machines and through hard work had managed to progress to his position of manager.

Listening to peoples’ stories is one of our favourite activities at the Canaan Project because we have found this to be one of the best ways to encourage aspiration; to expand the world of the young people by giving them new experiences and opening them up to new conversations with new people. It was great to hear the conversations between the young people on the way home, truly inspired and looking to develop new career paths with their new understandings and experiences and also their new network of contacts. Watch this space!

It was also interesting to come back to the Teviot and bump into one of the young people that said they would come but never turned up on the morning (for those working with young people you know what I’m talking about!). He was disappointed to miss the opportunity and I was also disappointed for him to have missed such a great opportunity. As is often the way it is those that are too lazy, or oversleep or make no effort or lie that will miss out, but it is the responsibility of the Canaan Project to keep throwing those young people opportunities in the hope that one day they take one and raise their aspirations and become all that they can be, running in to adulthood full of confidence and self esteem.

We have just started a new session with St Pauls Bow on St Stephens Road, just to be confusing! It is a development of their ongoing work with local young people. Last year Sam opened up the amazing community space for local young people aged 10 – 11. This year the Canaan Project has come in to work with and support the 11+ age bracket carrying on the great work started by Sam and working with him to develop positive relationships with the young people.

It is an exciting and developing project, west Bow has very little (if any) youth provision. This new piece of work really fits with the mission ‘provision where there is no provision’. This week we spent some time getting to know the leaders! Always a revealing exercise.

We have been covering a session at the Bede I mentioned it in a previous blog this was our last week. This has been a brilliant opportunity to get to know some more young people and work with a local partner. We have run a variety of sessions, on Drugs and Alcohol education, aspirations, employment and we have had a sports session. The Police came down to this Wednesdays session, it was interesting to see the reactions of the young people.

Relationships between some young people and the Police can be full of tension, I would say of the that say for 50% of the young people I meet, they have a ‘probem’ with the Police, potentially based on personal experience, for 45% they feel pressured to have a problem with the Police by the 50% and then for 5% they simply don’t mind! I should add this is not based on scientific research rather a youth workers hunch!

It was interesting to watch the young people and the Police talking, there is clearly a mis-trust from both sides and this bridge needs to be built and the meeting on Wednesday goes someway to doing that but I think part of the answer has to be about making the Police more human ‘who is under the riot suit?’ I am not sure really how to make this dialogue happen, I accept that this is not my responsibility or the Canaan Project’s nationally!!! But I do feel like we have some responsibility on the Teviot we need to work out a way to help young people and Police talk, and breakdown some of the barriers and build the bridge. Watch this space…

I write this Blog as the rain drives against the window in my office! But last week we had our Summer celebration, it was great. We had a BBQ and it was like the feeding of the 5000, they came from everywhere. We did have some technical issues with the BBQ apparently I, (James) bought the wrong lighting blocks (a bad workmen…) but once we got over that it went fine.

It is great feeding young people and throughout the night some great conversations ensued, the tools of a youth workers trade are their conversation skills and it was brilliant in the feedback and review meeting afterward to hear all the volunteers talking about the positive conversations and interactions they had with young people.

I think there is something in dealing with the young peoples physical needs(food) to move on to other needs. As Maslow points out with his idea of a Hierarchy of Need dealing with the bottom rung of the hierarchy , food, shelter etc and move up the scale (Click the word Maslow to see what i’m waffling on about). Informal education – the work of the youth worker, comes after the needs of the stomach! Sometimes we make these things complicated, they don’t need to be!

This is a picture of Sam Baker. He works at St Paul’s church on St Stephens Road (just to make it confusing) in Bow. A few years ago they had a refit/rebuild and it looks beautiful now (it could be described as a modern Noah’s Ark inside a grand old church – well worth a visit if you are near by) it is now an amazing community space with a cafe, gym, teaching facilities and a worship space, it is a really community focus church in the heart of Bow. As part of this community focus they employed Sam in September 2010 for 3 years (maybe longer) to work with the young people in the church but also those outside the church.

Sam and I met through some mutual friends in a local network in Tower Hamlets and started a conversation about how the Canaan Project might support Sam in his work in Bow. So for the last couple of Monday afternoons I have been doing detached sessions on the streets of Bow, we have spoken to some young people but at this stage been finding out about the community and the local needs. It appears that there is a high youth population in Bow but a real lack of provision for them.

It is great to work with other like minded individuals in the local area, I am looking forward to see how the relationship between Sam and the Canaan Project develops in the future.

These are a new set of Keys – they are really really small! We are helping a fellow organisation East London Tabernacle run a session on the Bede estate in Bow and these are the keys for the session. We are working out of a converted shop, that has been converted by East End Homes. It is always exciting to start new work with a new group of young people even if it is a little nerve racking. It runs every Wednesday afternoon 16:00 – 19:00, last week we saw around 21 young people. It is always good to work with new volunteers and other professional youth workers to learn new skills and see how others do it!