Venn review

We did a venn diagram review last night at M and Ms with three circles around the aim of the project (Personal and Social and Spiritual development of young people). We listed 20 activities we had done with in StreetSpace over the last six months and asked the yp to put them into the venn diagram as they thought they connected.

With my its all one hat I was nervous about the differentiation of the three areas, but the exercise worked well, with several activities in the centre of the diagram to denote it was about all three. The best surprise of the night how many yp balanced the activity across the three areas. Not sure what this says about Gen Y and indifference to spirituality.

One of the activities i included in the list had been getting a new path put in to the skate park, which I simply described as “New Path” and a couple located this firmly in the Spiritual.

Young Peoples Sunday

Press release Press release Press release Press release

Frontier Youth Trust calls for urgent investment in young people.

9 months of research into the future of Christian Youth Work in England

has culminated in a urgent appeal to Government Ministers to take youth work more seriously and to Denominational heads to motive their Churches to action.

FYT is calling for Churches and Christian organisations to commit 25% of their income on working with young people, particularly marginalised young people, in order to take the needs of those outside of the church more seriously.

‘With the media tending to demonise young people with such negative reporting , many of the general public are afraid to be in conversation with them. Christians need to sloth off their fears and engage with a generation that will soon give up entirely on the church if we are not careful,’ says Dave Wiles, Chief Executive of FYT.

Working in partnership with ‘2009: Year of The Child ’, Frontier Youth Trust is currently developing a FREE resource to assist Churches in celebrating young people in their communities and empowering them to reach their potential. Entitled, Young People’s Sunday, the resource will offer material and tools to help churches celebrate young people throughout 2009.

Church leaders are asked to pledge their commitment to working towards these objectives and specifically respond to the challenges with a firm undertaking to take appropriate action. Churches are also being prompted to lobby politicians to implement a commitment to long term funding of Christian faith based youth work by writing to MPs and Government ministers.

For further information, or to receive a resource pack for Young People’s Sunday, please email frontier@fyt.org.uk for details.

Gillingham and values and needs

Just back from doing some detached youth work and curriculum training for Medway local authority. Great bunch of workers and a good mix of council workers and people from the voluntary sector. One of things we explored was the balance of needs led work and values led practice. I was asked to focus on strategy and this was what led me to unpack values, as if we don’t know where we are coming from and heading we can’t have a strategy. I also explained the CPR curriculum approach and the resources including some of the newer recording sheets and evaluation (email me for info) which went down well. The final session was putting CPR into the Meet them where they’re at detached strategy, and looking at contact, progress and risk activities within each of the 9 strategy stages. This worked really well as there were several experienced workers in the group so could well be a good basis for a follow up roadshow for those who have already attended some training but want some more input and training.

Talent – Young People in Action

Dave Wiles (FYT The Haunted World of El Superbeasto download ) and Tim Evans (Worth Unlimited) are walking/hitching between, Bristol and Birmingham, and then heading north with only £10 in their pockets, collecting stories of hope from young people, once back they aim to release the stories to the media to counteract the predominance of negative coverage that young people seem to attract. They are in part lauching a new youth initative fund, that is to be raised by young people for young people. We are giving away £1000 to youth groups in £10 notes with the challenge to turn it into £100 by Christmas to fund the trust, if you want your youth group to get involved contact Nigel Pimlott. If you want to hear from Dave and Tim they are being interviewed tomorrow on Radio 5 Live (medium wave 693 and 909) between 10am and 10-30am
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Extract from the Project Outline

Talent Young People in Action

Introduction: Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) and Worth Unlimited are two organisations that work with and for young people on the margins of society. We have joined forces to create a trust fund that will be controlled by young people – for young people and which will enable them to act on their own concerns. We are tired of the negative stereotypes of young people and want to enable them to demonstrate that they are a positive force for change in society.

Creating the trust: In order to create the Young People in Action Trust fund we are giving away £1000 in £10 notes! We are offering 10 to any of the youth projects/groups that we link with and are asking them to take 3 months to turn this into as much as they can. As Christian organisations we see this as related to the parable of the talents (see Matthew 25:14) however we are quite happy about the double meaning in that we believe in young people and want to give them an opportunity to demonstrate their talent. We want to end the 3 months of talent multiplication by December 2006 as a symbolic gesture to celebrate Christmas. Just imagine if each group raises 100 with their 10 this would launch our youth led trust at the start of 2007 with £10,000! We also intend to continue fund raising to enable the trust to grow.

Young People in Action: We hope that the youth projects that FYT and Worth involve, in partnership with local youth workers, will catch the vision and show off their entrepreneurial skills. We will provide an ideas pack and guidelines for youth groups to use as they seek to invest their talents, but some of the ideas that have already emerged include:

Creating and selling hand made Christmas cards

Running a fare trade caf in a local hall

Selling hand made jewellery

A cake stall

Make over stall

Creating and selling a book of youth poetry

Organising a fashion show using charity shop clothes!

What we hope is that young people will invest their time and energy in some kind of action that will be fun and which will raise awareness of their potential as well as funds!

To launch the initiative the two directors of FYT and Worth Unlimited will be given £10 to go on the road for a week in order to collect 100 stories of hope about young people as a sponsored activity. During this time they will travel to Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow with no resources or arrangements other than contact with several local youth work projects, radio stations and their £10! Tim and Dave see this as an alternative model for Christian leaders to promote their ideas a substitute for large scale Christian conferences! The book with the stories of hope will be on sale during October.

The best youth work event in the world (probably)

The planning for the next Occasion is well underway. It is shaping up to be a truly excellent event again. If you are involved in youthwork anywhere from Gloucestershire down to Cornwall, or Dorest etc this is the event for you. The feedback last year was outstanding and this year with opportunities for young leaders, extra time volunteers, and full timers it has to be the place to be. The event truly does create a sense of Occasion last year the training was great and the lunch was memorable (taking everyone out to lunch for a great all you can eat Chinese). Follow the link to book a place BUT HURRY!
shout