Speaking to a parent the next day she said her daughter could hardly eat her dinner that night she was so tired! She also told us how good she felt it had been for her daughter to go on a trip with just girls, having 4 brothers who sometimes knock her confidence when she tries new things. And this is one of the reasons we are passionate about doing girls work…

Girls are under represented in youth clubs around the country but especially in the East End of London.  There are a number of reasons for this including the fact youth clubs are often orientated around activities that are traditionally male such as table tennis and pool. This results in spaces that are dominated by boys and girls who are either not interested in participating or too intimadated to do so. We are working hard to create safe spaces where girls feel able to fully relax and express themselves whilst also being able to challenge themselves and develop new skills and confidence. This day was a real success in all of  these respects and was a great end to the summer and beginning to a new term working with these girls.

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 his parents doctors? No. An older brother? No. Did he hear an inspirational talk from a Doctor? No. Was he saved from certain death on the edge of a cliff with a major head injury having fallen, trying to save a seagull? No. Simply (and it is simple) his Mum said he could be a Doctor – he could do it. He has it within himself to be a Doctor, to do the work in order to be a Doctor.

It struck me that often this is what it takes – a little encouragement. Maybe the key to lowering NEET figures is as simple as a little encouragement.

Wow – the summer  holidays are drawing to a close. We have run several projects this summer, some residential trips as well as our on going provision on the Teviot Estate. It has seemed to be particularly difficult to engage young people in activities this summer. There seems to have been a higher level of lethargy than normal. As I have been talking to other youth workers around the borough and London more widely I do not seem to be on my own in thinking this.

I wonder if we sometimes forget that young people access our service for social reasons – to hang out with their friends. If every time you went to the pub, someone came in asking if you would like to gain an accreditation for this or that, or if you could fill in this form, or give your opinion about this or that as well as giving you a massive menu of a multitude of events and trips to do or go to, maybe that would put you off your pint (or what ever you may drink)?!

As youth workers we want to see young people develop and progress, to experience new things, gain life skills and accreditations… But we have been reminded this summer that we also need to recognise a balance between structured activities and programmes and having no agenda other than to provide space for young people to just “be”.

I first came into contact with Canaan Project (CP) in summer 2004 when I was a volunteer on a basketball outreach team from Youth For Christ called ‘Fly’. I spent a week working with the then head of CP (Dave), and was instantly impressed with the way that it worked with local young people, and how effective it was!

When I moved down to London in October 2004 I started volunteering for CP at the weekly youth club that used to be held at Limehouse Centre every Friday. Then in January 2005 I started working full time for CP as a Sports Outreach worker. The aim of my job was to reach out to local young people through sport, this was done through a variety of ways, whether it was through detached work on a basketball court or running sports courses, as well as working at the Friday night youth club. I worked full time for CP for 8 months, but unfortunately it didn’t quite work out and the job ended at the end of August the same year. It was a very challenging time, during which I learnt a huge amount about myself, the local young people and about how/why the CP was so effective.

I really believe in the way that the CP works, which is why I have been volunteering on weekly basis to this day.

This leads me to a trip that we (James, Fiona and myself) ran last Saturday, where we took 14 local young people to an activity centre on the outskirts of London.  Stubbers is an activity centre that provides a variety of different activities, some of which are very unique to this centre. We were there for a full day, which allowed us to do four activities; starting with raft building. We then broke into two groups, my group did Jet skiing next, then High Ropes and finished with Mountain Boarding.

The day was, in my opinion, a success! We work with young people, so the day wasn’t without its challenges, including most of them taking an age to get ready for the next activity after getting wet whilst raft building, even though the group Fiona and myself where working with where doing Jet-skiing next (which, last time I checked involves quite a lot of water!) However, it was great to see our young people challenge their fears; whether it was of water, heights or falling down a hill.

It’s always rewarding to see young people take steps to stretch themselves and work towards conquering their fears, especially when they may not have any intention of doing so when they start out.

But this didn’t stop their enthusiasm though. The girls had a brilliant time and really threw themselves into all the activities – archery, climbing, tunnelling, high ropes, canoeing, obstacle course, team challenges and night walks in the forest. They really pushed themselves outside their comfort zones and discovered new skills and interests – one girl loved tunnelling so much we nearly lost her down every hole we walked past!!

It was a tiring but fun few days and a great opportunity to get to know and understand the girls better. We had some exciting chats about future projects they want to do so I’m really looking forward to working with them more in September.

Often conversations in youth clubs in my experience go like this:

Young Person: How much are you paid to be here? I bet it’s alot…

Volunteer: Nothing…

Young Person (Stunned silence): Why are you here then?

And the conversation continues, with volunteers giving a range of answers on their motivations for giving up their precious time on any given evening or weekend. Often with the conclusion (at least in my experience) of the Young Person leaving the conversation having a level of respect or understanding of the Volunteer and (in my words) as sense of value of themselves – ‘oh someone is giving up their time for me’. I remember quite distinctly this dawning on me, when I was a young person, I remember thinking about the people that were giving up their time to give me something to do, I also remember feeling guilt for the times I had thrown it back in their faces.

Reason 2 for Volunteers.

The second incident happened about 30 mins later, we have 6 computers in the community centre which are public access computers for the young people to safely access the internet. I walked up behind two young people on the computers (they were sitting next to each other) and began a conversation about what they were looking at on the computers – it was Facebook. After a dismissive grunt, I looked at their screens and as it transpired they were ‘chatting’ to each other via Facebook instant messaging function, as they sat next to each other.

These 2 examples got me thinking and asking a couple of questions:

1. What does this mean for Youth Work and Informal Education, a profession that depends heavily on conversation and spoken communication?
2. What does this mean for the young people? Are they missing out on communication skills? Can they communicate without a digital aid?

Shane, the spoken word artist, worked with the guys first on their material on the set. It was amazing to see a group of guys who previously didn’t all know each other and who all had very different stories, share so openly about their pasts and how these experiences had shaped them, their values and views. The four guys were then filmed one by one reciting their work to camera.

They all engaged brilliantly for the 6 hours that we were there, responding to a variety of directions and watching and encouraging each other in between. The crew said they were really impressed with the groups’ professionalism and got some great material so the result should be really good.

The video will be launched online in a few weeks time so watch this space…..

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 (and I speak as a Professional Youth Worker) we do not have real jobs! I got in to youth work because a great youth worker inspired me, and fundamentally I believe that is how we aspire in life, but not everyone can be  youth worker.

Aspirations are built by seeing or experiencing something which changes our thinking, attitudes and values and therefore aspirations. Why it is important that we have volunteers working with young people is because the volunteers come with all of their experience of their working life, and as they share their lives through conversations with young people, young people get inspired.

Reason 1 for volunteers.

So I started a lunchtime girls club in the school for year 7 girls with the aim of overcoming some of the barriers mentioned above as well as supporting the girls in their transition to secondary school. A previous project I had worked for, Urban Hope, also found that building relationships with girls when they’re younger and sustaining those relationships is the key to being able to work with them in their later teenage years. With very little advertisement whatsoever we had 60 girls attend the first session! Since then we have continued to see between 30 and 60 every week. We lay out a range of games, beauty and arts and crafts activities, play music and let the girls use the space however they want (within reason!!).

As well as having good numbers we’ve had some really positive feedback from the girls…

“Its fun because you can get to do all different activities.”

“Girls Club is good because we can listen to music and be ourselves because the boys aren’t around.”

Its a place where we can socialise and meet with all the girls in year 7 because outside we dont really come across eachother.”