Young People’s Committee : Keyfund : Different Views : Duke of Edinburgh : Playschemes :

Hexham Youth Initiative offers a range of support and advice through various on-going sessions at the drop ins, girls group, lads group and juniors group.

We also encourage young people to partake in various projects such as Duke of Edinburgh Award, Young People’s Committee, Playschemes, Different Views and Keyfund.

All young people have the chance to formally get their views across at a Hexham Youth Initiative’s Young People’s Meeting held every Tuesday at the Chill House Café from 6.30-7pm. The meetings are chaired, organised, recorded and arranged by young people and are supported by youth workers. The committee get together to discuss:

• The day-to-day running of the project
• Issues facing young people in Hexham,
• Fundraising
• Behaviour at sessions
• Rules and policies of Hexham Youth Initiative,
• Give feedback on sessions run at the project
• Feedback from other meetings and events – a lot of the young people who attend HYI’s Young People’s Meetings have also become involved in other youth forums and events through the project i.e. NERYA (North East Regional Youth Assembly), UKYP (United Kingdom Youth Parliament), Tynedale Youth Forum, Youth Bank, BYC (British Youth Council), Connexions, STR8-up Tour, etc
• Any other concerns

Every year we try to offer our committee members a residential weekend, for the last few years we have gone to Ambleside in the Lake District. At the residential the committee attend workshops on subjects like bullying, improving the committee and project, confidentiality, etc. The committee decide which workshops will be most useful beforehand. We always get positive feedback from these residential weekends, which give the committee the opportunity to team build, focus on their roles as committee members and have a great time away. While away we offer them the chance to do activities such as horse riding, mountain biking, eating out, going to the cinema, shopping, going on boat trips and enjoying the lovely surroundings of the Lake District.

Michelle Munnelly is our fully trained Keyfund Facilitator, who works with groups of young people who have a good idea and want to raise money to fund it. She has helped lots of
different groups get funding for activities such as Go Karting, Quad Biking or to get equipment
or refurbish their club.
The Keyfund is based on 12 Key Skills that the young people need to show they have used,
before they get the funding.

These skills are showing the ability to:

Michelle helps the groups to put their ideas together and present them to a panel who decide if they should get the money or not. The first application is for £100 and if that is successful you can apply for more money. So, if you have a good idea, why not get in touch with Michelle.

email: michelle@hexhamyi.org.uk

For more information on Keyfund, visit their website http://www.keyfund.org.uk/

Different Views is a new project, based at Hexham Youth Initiative, aimed at young people aged 13 - 19 years living in the Tynedale area.

We offer young people the opportunity to develop their understanding of citizenship, culture and the democratic processes in Britain and Europe, through participating in:

• Youth forums
• Cultural visits
• Exchanges to Europe

Our aim is to give young people the opportunity to try new things, widen their horizons and to help them develop their life and social skills.

The youth worker running this project Karren Spowart, has also done training with the Prince’s Trust and is a Support Worker for the Tynedale area for the European Programme. This programme aims to help young people aged 18 – 25 years move on in life by giving them the chance to develop specific work skills in another European country.

The local support worker will guide you through the programme, which is aimed specifically at unemployed young people. Through doing this programme, participants get the chance to spend three weeks in another country, gain certificates and get work experience.

For more information about Different Views and the Prince’s Trust’s European Programme contact Karren Spowart

email: karren@hexhamyi.org.uk

Heard about the Duke of Edinburgh Award? It is a nationally recognised Achievement Award, run by groups up and around the country. If you are aged between 14 – 25 years old and live in the Hexham area you can become a part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award at the Hexham Youth Initiative and get involved in something really worthwhile.
Participants get to try new things, improve their skills, gain new and exciting interests while spending time with their friends. Through the award young people are encouraged to choose, plan and achieve personal goals. As well as giving the young people who take part a personal sense of achievement, the Duke of Edinburgh Award is also seen as an extra qualification by many employers, so can benefit your career later on in life.
There are 3 Awards, starting with Bronze and becoming more and more challenging:

For each award, the participants have to choose an activity and do it for a set length of time e.g. 1 hour per week within a 4 month period.

The activities fall under the following 4 sections:

At the moment we run 3 Duke of Edinburgh Award Groups :

1 group of 13 young people doing their Bronze Award
1 group of 5 young people also doing their Silver Award
1 group of 9 young people who are doing their Silver Award, having succeeded in getting their Bronze in Spring 2003.

We run this award in partnership with Gateway into the Community.
So, if you are interested in doing the Duke of Edinburgh Award with the Hexham Youth Initiative please contact our youth worker Gillian Spowart

email: gillian@hexhamyi.org.uk

For more information on Duke of Edinburgh Award visit their website http://www.theaward.org/

Hexham Youth Initiative has been running Playschemes over the summer and Easter school holidays for the last 3 years. Our Summer Playscheme typically lasts three weeks and our Easter Playscheme runs for one week. We usually run 2 morning sessions per week with activities for 8-13 year olds such as:

• Face painting
• Crafts – painting, origami, clay models, etc
• Story telling
• Gardening
• Sports – football, cricket, rugby, rounders, parachute games, etc
• Competitions – egg hunts, Easter bonnet parade, etc
• Board games – chess, draughts, cards, dominoes, etc
• Puzzles and quizzes

At our Playschemes we provide a crèche facility, run by Village Access, for children up to 8 years old.

We provide low cost trips once a week through out our Playschemes for 8-13 year olds, to places like Wet’n’Wild, Druridge Bay, Diggerland, Centre of life, Bowling, different play parks, etc. We also run trips and activities for over 13’s in the past we have taken groups to Flamingoland, Lightwater Valley, Go-Karting, Fishing, etc.

Additionally, we offer junior and senior groups overnight camping trips during the summer holidays. We have camped at Kielder, Otterburn, the Seahouses, Witton-le-wear, Brampton and the Lake District.

Throughout the year we also take small groups of young people (over 14 years) sailing on the North East coast with the Ocean Youth Trust.