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. [...]
This is the 100th blog on this website! This is great, this means there is 100 stories and thoughts all about the Canaan Project and the amazing work that we do with young people! When you have some time to kill have a read over the old stories and the thoughts we have had they [...]
One of our young volunteers is really into photography and actually more than that, he is really good at it and is trying to make a career out of it. We have been talking for ages about the possibility of him sharing some of his knowledge with some of his peers. Last night he brought [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Consultation of young people is a concept thrown around in youth work circles – a lot. Yesterday we had a great discussion at the Canaan Project about it and these are some of our thoughts: We need to improve our consultation and how we record the thoughts of young people in our services. Having a [...]
I was struck this week after 2 significant conversations with 2 different young people about their complicated family set up’s and that the context a young person lives in is so key to who they are. For every 2 hours they are with us a week there are 166 hours of the week they are [...]
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 [...]
Pushing boundaries is part of growing up and responding to this pushing is part of being a youth worker. As mentioned last week we have started a new session and changed an existing one. For the young people new sessions mean new boundaries which means a new opportunity to push those boundaries! The last couple [...]
It has been a busy couple of weeks! As per the last post we visited the Mirror last Tuesday. Last Thursday (27th October 2011) we had a visit from Mr Pascoe a director from Goldman Sachs. He lead a quick quiz (with a prize) to spike interest and then gave an excellent short talk about [...]
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 [...]
This is a good question! It can appear as a range of different things and some of those seem explainable whilst other elements are less easy to appreciate or evaluate. Sometimes it can just look like a whole lot of people messing about in canoes (as above) but i can assure you all has purpose [...]
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 East London, mental health issues are prevalent amongst young people. ‘Tower Hamlets has many of the risk factors for poor mental health. These include: high population density; overcrowding; high rates of unemployment and poverty; poor physical health; high rates of substance misuse’ (NHS Tower Hamlets, Public Health Priorities, 2010). It is vital, then, that [...]
This photo is of the joint feedback form completed by the young people on the Leadership Course run by LEAP that happen last weekend at the Canaan Project. As you can see they all identified that they have learnt about taking responsibility and there are some nice comments alongside the photos. The course was a [...]
Working ‘with’ young people is the second part of our mission or put more simply how we practically engage with young people. The aspiration behind this is to work with what young people want to engage with, rather than imposing our agenda on young people. This is in reality a very difficult journey to walk. [...]
We have been working with LEAP (and now Poplar HARCA) for a number of months and I have gone on about it, but I wanted to give you the best insight I can possibly give you about this piece of work: that of a young person. This young person (pictured) took part in a Quarrel Shop at LEAP [...]
Working with young people can be really great, sometimes working with young people can be a real struggle! For all you youth workers out there I am sure you can appreciate this, for those of you that do not work with young people or do not work with young people as a youth worker, it [...]
I just wanted to up date you on the current funding situation, as some of you may have been aware for a long time it was looking a little bit scary at the Canaan Project, but we have made it to our Year End 1st September 2011 and there were times this was looking like [...]
A interesting paragraph from a government report from the Educational Select Committee on services for young people. ‘Around 85% of young people’s waking hours are spent outside formal education, yet each year local authorities spend 55 times more on formal education than they do on providing services for young people outside the school day. We [...]
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 [...]
So I feel like it is appropriate to pen a response or opinion to the current situation and the last week’s activities in London. It seems that the media, the government and potentially the wider community want answers to the ‘deeper’ reasons for this happening, as David Cameron stated today (Thursday 11th Aug). I was [...]
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 [...]
I just want to pay tribute to our volunteers. This week we received some external feedback about the volunteers from a knowledgable and reliable source. That having viewed our work and the volunteers he concluded the volunteers are ’excellent’. He is absolutely right they really are excellent and so committed to the young people. Last [...]
I thought I would show this photo, (I am sorry about the quality). It says ‘BBM has changed my life’. I asked the young person why he wrote that and what does it mean. He said ‘since BBM i’ve had more sex, more arguments i’ve got more friends and done more stuff’. That’s life for [...]
I have just been on holiday (which was great), this gave me the opportunity to catch up on some reading, the books have been piling up on my bed side cabinet! I read a great book called ‘Working with Young People in Love and Hate‘ written by Nick Luxmoore, he has a number of years [...]
Sometimes youth work is about offering young people opportunity or experience even when they might not deserve it or even take us up on the offer. We are made up from loads of different experiences this informs who we are. We have been working with one young person for a number of years and he has been really difficult, [...]
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 [...]
Last night was the first time I did not feel 100% safe as I made my way to youth club on the Teviot. This week there have been a couple of muggings on the estate (apparently by young people) in broad day light and a fight between to rival groups of young people. Now these [...]
A common issue in youth clubs up and down the country is young people drinking. This story from the BBC today prompted this blog, along with yet another conversation with a group of young people about drinking last night in youth club. This has been becoming more common recently again. We had a group that [...]
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. [...]
Over the past couple of months a particular group of boys at our Thursday night youth club have kept asking us when we’re next going to take them on a residential. Some of them have been on previous trips with us and some of them haven’t. We had to explain that our funding for trips [...]
I’m really excited about writing the blog this week as I (Fiona) have permission to tell you about the journey one of our young people has been on over the past two years. We first met Amy when she was 15 and her and her friends started to come to our Thursday night youth club. [...]
Today the Princes Trust released a new report about young people which is particularly interesting in relation to the correlation between ‘poor’ young people and lack of aspiration and conversely those young people that may be more ‘well off’ and higher aspirations. Here is a link to the paper. It is worth a read. We [...]
I took a young person yesterday to an office in Bank to meet a potential volunteer that works for a well known international company. As we were walking to the office for the meeting we were talking about the contrast between the crumbling paths of the Teviot Estate and the posh streets of Bank and Canary Wharf, [...]
We are just doing the monitoring and evaluation for the funder that gave us money for Canaan – Trips over the last year. We had 112 places for young people to go on trips some of which have been talked about on this blog, we did 3, 3 day Residential trips, and numerous day trips [...]
For those of you that read this regularly may know what I am talking about, but for those who have no idea. Futsal is an indoor version of football further information here or watch the video below to fill you in. The Canaan Project has a futsal team and we play in a local league [...]
I wanted to fill you in on the area in which we work – the map above tells you of some of the isolation that people may feel in the area, cut off by 2 Major A roads a Canal and a DLR . This is an extract from a funding bid, put together by [...]
This week we had the pleasure of taking 13 young women from our year 8 Girls Club to an outdoor pursuits centre in Southampton called Calshot. Its an amazing centre on a spit of land that sticks out into The Solent, providing a range of water and land based activities. During our stay we did [...]
Next week we are taking 13 young women on a residential and there is loads of preparation that goes in to these events. From the fund raising that has happened to make it even possible, the day to day forms and planning to spending time chasing young people to make sure they have given the right [...]
We always knew this but it was proved this week at the Institute of Educations Evaluation of the Salmon Youth Centre event. Here is a copy of the report summary. For me one of the key findings of the report and was reflected in the presentation at the event, was that relationships are key to [...]
One of the things we try to do at our various sessions is to engage young people in conversation about issues that are in the news. We believe this is really valuable for a number of reasons. Many of the young people we work with have little experience of life outside of their immediate communities [...]
We love working with volunteers. We have such a committed team and I believe it makes a real difference to the young people. I think that working with volunteers that are committed to young people and to making a difference in their lives is really important and communicates value to the young people. Valuing young [...]
We have a new worker! Can I introduce Sifa. She is our new Finance and Administrative Assistant. She is working for us for 4 hours a week keeping us in check and making sure people get paid. We really appreciate her and her role. Without someone doing all this stuff we can not work effectively [...]
Well we survived horse riding! It was great actually and I think the Girls that we took had a great time, some of them meeting and riding a horse for the first time and loving getting out of London and being outside in the forest. Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local [...]
This week has been extremely busy! We have had a week full of trips, mainly for the young women that access Canaan Project activities. The boys did get a look in – we took the Futsal boys out for lunch on Monday, which was fun and a bit of a celebration of finishing the season [...]
“Young peoples’ lives are lived principally in hope. They have high aspirations; for they have never yet been humiliated by the experience of life, but are unacquainted with the limiting force of circumstances…” - Aristotle – 4th century BC Unfortunately we do not always find this to be the case with the young people we work [...]
We love cooking at the Canaan Project and Cooking Club provides a valuable opportunity for us to spend some focused time with young people, helping us to build up a fuller picture and understanding of them, their lives and the issues they face. As a result we have been able to help the young people [...]
So we had our last league game for Futsal this Tuesday. We lost! But the aim (set by myself and Mike the volunteer involved) was that we should not finish bottom of the league and we actually finished 3rd from bottom. Or more positively 7th place in the league! Mission accomplished!! I am so proud of the [...]
There is a really great campaign running at the moment called the 99percent campaign. It is based on the following statistics: ‘In London, the total number of people under 20 accused of Serious Youth Violence in 2009 was 1336**. The under 20 London population in 2009 was 1, 868 457***, this means an actual percentage of 0.07%’ [...]
On Friday night we showed This is Real (click the link at the top of this page to view) to an expectant and excited room full of interested parties, including the stars of the film. It was a really good event at MPC (Moving Picture Company) in Soho. We also played a short film showing [...]
Tonight it is the Screening of This is Real – exciting times! The video is available. Click the link at the top of this page that says ‘This is Real’. Please do share…
So we have reached a new year and this seems an appropriate place to have a little look at Canaan Project over the next year. To start I want to lay down a challenge to myself and other authors on this site to have a real emphasis on the positive. 2011 is going to be a positive [...]
Our Christmas present to ourselves at the Canaan Project this year was a shiny new database courtesy of Lamplight! I wouldn’t ordinarily be excited about a database (and definitely wasn’t during the process of entering over 400 young peoples details onto it and hundreds of work records!!) but looking at the list of young people [...]
For our last session before Christmas we decided we would help everyone get in the festive spirit by having a Christmas Quiz. We werent sure how this would go down as we haven’t done anything like this before and know how attached the young people are to their table tennis!! But we had a good [...]
So on Tuesday 14th December 2010 Canaan Project FC made their first win! This has been long coming. We have had many, many draws and a couple of losses. I cannot tell you how many times they have hit the crossbar or the goal posts. I personally have never been so tense whilst working with [...]
Over the past 18 months we having been working with Poplar HARCA speaking to young people about the Spotlight Youth Centre, a youth centre that they are planning to build on the estate we work on. In that time we have spoken to 1200 young people, gathering their opinions on the design of the building, [...]
This week we have been filming the reactions of young people to the film we made with a group in the summer. The short (short!) film is about the experiences, hopes and dreams of young people in Poplar. It has been great to watch the difference between young peoples reactions. Some have got quite emotional about [...]
As I’m sure you’re all aware from the yellow fluffy ears people grew and Terry Wogan seeming to have set up home in your TV, last Friday was Children in Need day! Our Year 7 and Year 8 Girls Clubs did their bit by making badges and icing biscuits to sell to teachers and pupils [...]
I am going to take this opportunity to introduce you to Amy – this is Amy. She has been working with us since March 2010, and clearly she has lost it! Currently Amy is doing a Young People and Childcare course and is volunteering for us for over 15 hours per week. In fact some [...]
So cooking club is back! We have had a little bit of a break from Cooking Club over the summer but have now started with a new group of girls from one of our Langdon Park Girls Clubs. Its a ten week course that takes place on Monday evenings where we learn to cook a [...]
This week we set out a table with a bunch of information and this video playing: We have asked the young people to bring some presents for the shoe boxes next week. To be honest i thought that this would not work, that they simply would not be interested, but i was surprised at how [...]
Last week (half term) we took 20, 12 to 13 year old girls ice skating. This may seem to be a random location to take them, but this had been requested by the girls. Before Fiona even started her young women only sessions in Langdon Park School, a young girl asked if we could take [...]
We had a great detached session last night. We couldn’t run club as usual due to the centre being used as a polling station for the local mayors election. So we hung out on the football pitch instead. Its interesting how much a change of context can change the dynamics of our interactions with the [...]
If you read this blog regularly you may well think I harp on about our volunteers, well you are right! The volunteers are what makes Canaan Project work. I wanted to share something that happened this week which made me felt pretty emotional about our volunteers. On Tuesdays we have a Futsal team (read this Blog [...]
The third reason I love working with volunteers is, they are not Professional Youth Workers. Now this may sound slightly strange, but hear me out (or read me out)! I gave my details to another Youth Organisation on behalf of some young people, the Youth Worker that rang me up to invite these young people [...]
Its the start of another school year which means a new group of year 7 girls for my Lunch Club at Langdon Park School. As my group from last year remember, starting secondary school is really scary, especially for those who don’t know anyone, and the club really helped a lot of them meet other [...]
Last week on Thursday night, our main night of provision at the Teviot Centre, we had a Fun Night. This consisted of a BBQ and a Bunge Run – look at the photo for evidence of this. It was great, between 50 and 60 young people attended and they all seemed to really enjoy themselves. [...]
We have been working for the last 18 months on a local myplace bid. It is called the Spotlight Youth Centre and will be in our local area on the Langdon Park School site. We have have been working on consulting young people about what they would like both in relation to the design and look [...]
So this week Canaan FC had their first match (a pre season friendly). It was great. They were a little nervous to start off but soon got in to the swing of it and did really well and were all over the other team! Unfortunately we lost 5 – 4 but I have every faith in [...]
We have just taken a group of girls to Stubbers Adventure Centre (Wednesday this week) and it was an adventure! This trip was a continutation of our targeted girls work that Fiona wrote about a little while ago. We did lots of activities of which jet skiing was the favourite, but they also built rafts, [...]
‘Young people need to be encouraged in order to proceed in life, I know people that haven’t been encouraged which led to bad stuff happening’ Last night I spent a few moments talking to the young person in the photo – he is 16. He wants to be a Doctor. This intrigued me. Why a doctor? Were [...]
Firstly, thanks to James G (the Northern One) for the blog last week, if you have not read it – do! He is an amazing volunteer and a good friend and encourager! Wow – the summer holidays are drawing to a close. We have run several projects this summer, some residential trips as well as [...]
Hey everyone it’s James here, not the usual James you’re used to hearing from, but the Northern James. I’m 27 from Sheffield and have been married for nearly two years to a crazy young lady from Swansea in South Wales. I first came into contact with Canaan Project (CP) in summer 2004 when I was [...]
This week we took ten girls from my Year 7 Girls Club on a 3-day trip to a residential centre in the middle of the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. This was a very different experience to taking away 15-17 year old boys as we did in May – buying teddies in the service station, [...]
As in a previous post, I am committed to working with volunteers. The second reason I am convinced in working with volunteers is young people can see themselves as more valuable. How I hear you ask? Often conversations in youth clubs in my experience go like this: Young Person: How much are you paid to be [...]
Last night at youth club 2 examples of the digital age or the ‘post digital age’ whatever you may call it unraveled before me. As I was leaning on the Cafe counter chatting to one of the volunteers we overheard one young person say to another ‘ when I have no BB messenger I feel empty‘ [...]
As the culmination of a Spoken Word project we’ve been doing (see previous blogs…), we had a day shooting a short film last Saturday. The idea was to give the young people an opportunity to perform and record their work and also to give them space to voice their experiences of being a young person [...]
I love our volunteers and I love working with volunteers, I passionately believe that volunteering is essential to not only the Canaan Project but to Youth Work in general. Why? you might ask. Surely it is better to pay ‘professional’ workers to only work with young people, and surely it is easier. The trouble is [...]
Fiona here. I wanted to tell you about the girls work I’ve been doing in the local secondary school, Langdon Park. I originally approached the school about doing some girls work there in response to the very low numbers of girls that were attending our Thursday night youth club sessions. This situation is replicated in [...]
Last night the Teviot Centre in Poplar was full to the brim if not overflowing with creativity (that is the link with the misplaced photo!). We had 4 visiting poets performing to the young people instead of the normal club. We also invited other youth centres to come and visit, Salmon youth centre attended and they bought [...]
I wanted to introduce you to another young person, he is 17 lives in Poplar and comes to Canaan Project to our weekly session, as you can see from the photo he enjoys football! We sat down for a 10 minute conversation, I would say this is longest I have talked to him and this is [...]
This week fresh from the residential, we walked straight back into life on the Teviot. On Wednesday night a young person had their face slashed because he is from a different area. Thursday night our normal club was a really fun night and we seemed to continue to develop some more strong relationships with young [...]
So the blog this week is a day late, this is because this week we were on a residential trip. We went for 3 days and 2 nights to Calshot an activities centre on the south coast with a bunch of boys aged 13 – 19. It was a challenging and tiring time, we did [...]
We are going on a Residential Trip next week for 3 days. It is very exciting for us as workers as well as for the young people. It is often a golden time to build relationship with young people. Sharing experiences, fears and tribulations together connects people in special ways. In preparation for this trip, we invited a [...]
The Grand Finale to our the first installment of Cooking Club, was a trip to a Restaurant. We took all five boys, aged 11 – 13 it was a brilliant experience on a number levels. One to get out of the East End, some having never been to a Restaurant let alone going to West London. The meal was enjoyed [...]
On Monday we took a group of young people to a Spoken Word event at the Salmon Centre. It was a really inspiring time for both the workers and the young people. There were 3 artists performing, each inspiring in their own way as they performed in their individual styles. One of the artists, a 15 year [...]
Here is an interesting article dangerous-dogs-as-weapons it has to be said that i think the Guardian is a little slow on the up take this has been a concern for a number of years but was recently brought to my attention again. We have seen a few young people with dogs in the last couple of [...]
This week I wanted put some work on the Blog from a young person. This was written by a 14 year old boy that lives in Poplar. Below are some excerpts from his work: I belong to God but the streets are pulling me away, everyday I find a way for the haters to pay, right now i got [...]
Fiona and I were on outreach this week and we bumped in to Garry. He has been coming to Canaan Project for the last couple of years and also attended last years residential to Calshot. This is what he said: ‘Canaan Project is brilliant because it gives young people something to do. The trouble is [...]
Sometimes when working with young people we can jump to the wrong conclusions especially in the cloud of negative media that surrounds them. Potentially it is easier and arguably safer to have lower expectations of the young people we see, but at Canaan Project we try to approach young people with the opposite attitude, that [...]
Hi people. I’m Fiona and work for the Canaan Project. You can read a bit about me below. James and I have been reflecting this week on the violence between local young people, which seems to be becoming more and more frequent or at least we’re more aware of it. The use of weapons such [...]
The Canaan Project has been recently been successful in getting money for trips including:
2 x Residential Trips (one male, one female)
3 x Cooking Club Trips – a meal at a nice restaurant for our Cooking Groups
2 x Activity Day Trips
We have started a Cooking Club in which we work with a small group of young people each term on a Monday afternoon.
Through cooking a series of dishes from around the world the young people are learning about new foods, developing a range of food preparation skills and gaining knowledge about the nutritional content of different foods and what makes a balanced diet. It has been great to see the current group of 5 boys, gain new skills and knowledge whilst having a great time and a good dinner. One of the boys even said he might be interested in becoming a chef!
Through a partnership between Langdon Park School, Poplar HARCA and Poplar Boys and Girls Club a bid was put in to a government initiative called Myplace who fund ‘world-class’ youth centres. The bid was successful and a £6 million youth centre is now scheduled to built on the Teviot Estate.
James has been at the Canaan Project since January 2008. Before this he had experience working with young people in various contexts, including the Drugs and Alcohol field, working with NEET young people (Not in Education Employment and Training) and working with young people in a Church. He also has a degree in Informal and Community Education.
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