During the month of May we asked young people from Bolton upon Dearne, Thurnscoe and Goldthorpe areas what sort of activities they would like to do on the night times and weekends when we work. All the areas said they would like to do sports and came up with a football project at Deaneside Leisure Centre. We had put this activity on before and it went very well. They also came up with doing a survival course so we researched it and gave The Alternative Curriculum Company (Alt CC) a call to find out what sorts of activities they could do for us. We wanted to have a change and find something to do in the Barnsley area so young people could do these types of activity with or without us and with their friends and family. The Alt CC said they could do us a basic survival course and they would come to Barnsley and do it with us out there.
Doing the programs
Football
We put on a football project during May at Dearneside Leisure centre and we had a great turn out. Overall we had over 40 different young people from all three different areas turn up during these training sessions. It was good that we brought the areas that normally don’t meet up into one place to get to know each other. We spilt the young people into 5 different teams and asked them what sort of rules we should impose when doing the sessions. We had lots of young people improving on their football skills while with us and they said it was great to have something to do on a Tuesday night instead of just sitting in the park. After the football project finished they asked us to start doing it outdoors in their areas. We now do a football night every Tuesday in two different areas (Bolton upon Dearne and Goldthorpe) and it’s got a great turnout. And we are putting a team together to play other teams of young people associated we the Youth Association in Wakefield and Barnsley.
Survival course
On 29th May The Alt CC came to Cannon Hall Park in Barnsley. The first thing we did was change into camouflage clothing. We then went into the woods and the young people were given a task to make a shelter that would keep them warm and out of the wind and rain. They worked in teams of 3 and split up. All 4 groups did fantastic at the task and afterwards we went around and told the groups were they could improve. We all then went to a built up tree area and did the same again to see if they took on board the improvements from the other groups again they did fantastic. When we had all finished, the trainers from The Alt CC taught young people how to cook with army rations – the young people enjoyed this very much. After dinner we had some team building tasks to do and learned how to camouflage our faces with face paint. All in all this was a great day!
Jody and Lisa
- First survival challenge
