An Awards for All grant of £9,936 is enabling us to have a fun and full packed holiday activity programme until April 2011. The funding is covering a series of 6 weekly dress making courses starting in mid October for 12 young people, motor safety and maintenance for 24 young people with off road obstacle courses in partnership with young drive, an animal project looking at the different ways young people can work with animals, swimming lessons, and accredited courses in kayaking, canoeing, archery and team building exercises including raft building, high wire and
obstacle courses.
We have also recently received some funding from Mid Sussex Well Being grant to run a pilot football team with the Brighton & Hove’s Albions. This is intended to start at the beginning of September until the October half term 2010.
Since February 2008 we have been working with young people across Sussex on a three year project funded by BBC Children In Need. We were very fortunate to be able to recruit Clare Bingham, who is a qualified Youth Worker, to the post of Young Persons Coordinator and, since the start of the project, she has worked with well in excess of 100 young people across the County. The task can be particularly challenging because Clare works with some of the most deprived and socially excluded young people living in the County. Some are so-called roadsiders living with their parents or guardians on unauthorised sites and thus likely to be moved on at any time. For these young people there is virtually no contact with the outside world; they can be stuck in remote locations far from public transport facilities and totally unable to access the recreational facilities that most young people take for granted. They may only mix with their siblings and be living on sites that have little or no play facilities available to them. Although they may attend school, they may be on restricted timetables and experience the bullying, discrimination and racism against Travellers that stills occur in groups of young people. Education can still be a rather negative experience for young Gypsies and Travellers, despite the excellent and dedicated work of the Traveller Education Services, and the fact that these services no longer receive ring-fenced funding may be a contributory factor to the falling educational attainments that we have witnessed in the Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller communities in recent years.
Clare works to support young Gypsies and Travellers, to build their confidence and help them access into the normal activities enjoyed by young people in the community. She provides individual support and mentoring but also arranges exciting programmes of group activities during school holiday times as a means of retaining their interest and enthusiasm. Importantly she designs her work programmes around the ideas, needs and wishes of the young people themselves so that they feed valued and respected.
