We have an Xbox which we get out at youth clubs once a month in each club. After a number of discussions we decided to get an Xbox as young people had been asking for a while for some sort of computer console and we had a very kind donation that was able to fund it.

We limit its use in clubs for several reasons, if young people have each week they seem to get bored of it/take it for granted, so when it comes out they seem to engage better with it, as if it’s new! Also it we had some concerns about whether it was conducive or not to youth work, what I mean is; one of the foundations of youth work/informal education is conversation and a computer console is not necessarily very conducive to conversation.

So we got an Xbox Kinect, for those that do not have a clue what this means here is a video, but basically you control the computer and games with your body. We thought that young people might get involved and it would be great fun, well that was the intention, it has not happened, young people are not interested! Even with youth workers encouraging and grabbing young people and getting them to join in, just not interested. Mainly I think they do not want to look silly in front of their peers/mates, dancing/bouncing/moving about, which I can understand.

So after further conversations, they want controllers and a number of games that have age restrictions for violent or graphic images, we are obviously not going to allow young people that are under age to play these games. There are however a number of games that do not have age limits which have potentially violent images and or images that might be contradictory to the conversations we might be having with young people, around fighting for example. It has kicked up a real discussion between volunteers and their feelings about what games we should get or not and what are the values and ethics of the Canaan Project. Whilst the young people just want new games!  Watch this space…

There are many services available to young people that focus on specific areas of support whether that be drug and alcohol education, sexual health support or careers advice. The Canaan Project is not one of these services. We don’t specialise in any particular area of support.

What we do aim to be is a first point of contact for young people on the Teviot Estate – offering them a safe place to go, to take part in some positive activities, and  have access to some adults that take an interest in them and their holistic development. Through ongoing relationships built with the young people week on week, and a variety of activities, we aim to help them begin to understand themselves and their place in the world as well as to start to develop new interests and skills. Being generalists we often find ourselves needing to have a basic understanding in a whole range of areas eventhough specialising in none. Since becoming a youth worker I (Fiona) have learnt how to cook, invented a whole catalogue of craft activities, learnt the intricacies of pool rules and developed some basic counselling skills and conflict resolution techniques. These all go into the tool box, ready to be drawn upon at the relevant time.

However one of the most important, and often tricky, parts of this generalist approach is to know where our role ends and to identify where the intervention of experts and specialist services is appropriate and to be able to support young people in accessing these services. Generalists definitely have their limits but part of our role is to provide the bridge between young people and specialists. If we are to best support young people, both approaches are vital.

In my first “Beautiful Brains” blog (30th December) I talked about the impact of the development of connections between different areas of the brain on young peoples decision-making processes. There are other areas of brain development that impact behaviour choices during adolescence by prompting them to seek different sensations. This causes young people to be more likely to take risks. This is often perceived as an undesirable characteristic of young people and does sometimes result in negative and/or dangerous behaviour. However the search for new forms of stimulation also leads young people into useful experiences that enable them to meet new people, discover interests and develop skills.

Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences suggests that traditional forms of education work against this development process by requiring young people to specialize too early on. He argues that in order to benefit fully from this physiological phenomenon young people should be encouraged to pursue a broad range of subjects and experiences (not just academic) until they are much older. This is something that the Canaan Project aims to support. We actively seek to offer young people experiences that they wouldn’t otherwise have whether it be jumping off a pier as part of a residential trip, visiting a workplace or playing football with a member of their community that they didn’t previously know. We believe that we are helping young people to seek stimulation in positive places and discover the building blocks for aspiration.

References

David Dobbs, 2011. Beautiful Brains. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/teenage-brains/dobbs-text

Howard Gardner, 2006. Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons. Basic Books.

I took this image on my way to work this morning. It was a fresh London morning and I was thinking about the coming year particularly as this week at the Canaan Project we have been planning for the 2012. I am going to list some of things that you might see on the blog over the coming year, that we are working on:

1. A new film! For those that did not see last years This is REAL here it is. We are looking at doing another short film looking at the aspirations of young people.
2. More stories from young people about their aspirations and the hopes and dreams they may have. At the Canaan Project we are talking about more than just careers but aspirations for all aspects of life including family, friends and community.
3. More work with young volunteers. We are looking at how young people are working in their community through the Canaan Project, how they are supporting their peers, how this is developing them and how we are facilitating this.
4. We are looking to continue to develop our evening youth club sessions especially the newer one for younger, young people, with new and exciting aspects – more to be revealed later.
5. The Girls work particularly at Langdon Park will be taking on a new shape over the coming weeks and we will be posting about how that is going to work.
6. We are getting a plan together to carry on funding the project. I think financially 2012 may bring some challenges, but the quality of the work will find some funding i’m sure.
7. Oh and their is some sort of sporting event happening locally!! I think we might do something around that!

We are really excited about 2012 and are looking forward to working with young people and seeing them develop and continue to grow into the positive interdependent adults we know and believe they can be. Bring on 2012!

There was a fascinating article in National Geographic a few weeks back which James mentioned in his ‘Who asked you anyway?’ post. As he said, the article describes the development process that the brain goes through during the teenage years and the impact this on their actions.

In order to make a decision an adult will take into consideration many different variables such as desire, rules, risks, past experience etc. This involves drawing on information from many different parts of the brain. During the teenage years the connections within and between the different parts of the brain are still developing and growing stronger which means that a young person is still learning to balance all these different variables which initially happens “clumsily”.

In my conversations with young people I can almost see this process happening and to some degree have the privilege of being part of it. A core part of what we do is listening to young people, helping them become aware of, and find words for all the different things they are thinking and feeling towards different situations they face and helping them think through the different responses available to them and weighing those responses up in light of their possible consequences. This is sophisticated stuff and isn’t learnt quickly. In fact the article suggests that these “connections” aren’t fully formed until we are 25.

As well as a reminder to be patient(!) this gives me renewed faith in the value of the work we are doing, supporting young people in their development.

References from “Beautiful Brains” by David Dobbs

This is a picture of the Christmas Meal! It was at Nando’s and the quote of the night was ‘errr sorry sir we have run out of chicken’. It was an opportunity to say thanks for all the amazing work that the volunteers do, this also included the Trustees, although they have to buy their own dinner!

There are a number of people that are not on in this picture but are of equal importance and equally contribute to the life of this amazing Charity, from funders, to website design, people that have donated their money, people that support with prayer and good will, all have a stake and make a difference to the lives of young people in Poplar East London, Thank You.

There will continue to be Blogs over the Christmas period as we love telling you about what is going through our minds!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Last night we had our annual Christmas Quiz at the Teviot Centre. It was great fun with several rounds of exciting quizzical activities, including making a human Christmas Cracker, What happens next?, and a feeling round! The young people seemed to really enjoy it and this is part of our role as Youth Workers to give young people the opportunity to have fun!

We have stopped our services for the Christmas period but will be back in the new year. Giving us sometime to do some reflection and review and run into the new year!

There are still going to be blogs going up over Christmas so keep reading!

This is a phrase used a lot in the sessions we run. Competition is an element that is so important in our work and especially (although not exclusively) our engagement with young men. Last night in our new older session for young people (School Year 10 to age 19) Alex (name changed) won 38 consecutive games of Table Tennis (up to 11)! I think, since records begun (this is a loose term in respect of counting games) this is the longest someone has ever stayed on the table tennis table, the entire 2 hour session.

Afterwards we had a brief conversation about whether we should have intervened on the informal rules of the table set up by the  young people of ‘winner stays on’ to let more people have a go, but decided against this. The young people decided the rule and implement it and none of them had a problem with Alex’s domination of the table. He provided the competition for the evening – ‘who can get Alex off the table’. Everyone had a go, leaders included. In fact I was ‘white-washed’ which means the score reached 6-0 and I was simply dismissed from the table as a waste of time!  Our instinct can sometimes be to make things so ‘fair’ that we end up trying to protect young people from experiencing loss or failure of any kind. But actually this creates a slightly false environment as outside of the walls of the youth club life is full of competition where some people are better than you at some things and you are better than them at other things. Failures and losses can also, as in the above  example, be a really motivating, driving force for improvement. The trick for us at the Canaan Project is to let this lesson be learnt in a safe environment where it is reflected upon.

This learning is another part of the process of moving from childhood and dependence to adulthood and inter-dependance. Losing at Table Tennis could hold more significance than it may first seem!

I (Fiona) moved to Tower Hamlets 5 years ago to do youth work and for me that also meant wanting to become part of the local community. I naively thought that being accepted by people meant becoming like them. It didn’t take me very long to realise that however much I dropped my t’s and shopped at the local market, this wasn’t possible! I’m different or ‘posh’ as I am regularly reminded. I’m never going to have had the experience of growing up in the inner city or many of the other experiences that my young people have faced – good and bad. I’m always going to be Fiona who grew up in a village and as a child, played in fields rather on than building sites. But what I also realised was that this was ok and being different didn’t mean that I couldn’t fit in or be accepted and in fact I am more able to connect with people when I embrace who I am and where I’ve come from and am honest about it.

In a recent conversation with another youth worker we found ourselves discussing the fact that as much as we can never be ‘like’ the young people we work with, neither can they ever, or should they ever, be ‘like’ us. As youth workers we need to be careful that in our desire to see young people progress, we aren’t placing expectations on them to become ‘like’ us. As adults and professional reflective practitioners we have put careful consideration into the values and principles that we live and work by. But our role is not to impose these on the young people we work with, however much we believe in them, but to enable young people to develop their own set of values and to have integrity in living them out. This doesn’t necessarily mean they will be in conflict with our own values but we need to be prepared for this to be the case.