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YOF: Dinton Field Sports Room

What was the situation?

The young people living in the local area surrounding Dinton Field (Canbury Ward) had no youth provision in the vicinity and these young people were hanging around in the local area, bored. Kingston Police had approached the YMCA and asked them to provide something for the young people that they were in contact with who had nothing to do and nowhere to go.

The Young People themselves were mainly from a disadvantaged background and were low achievers:

• 15% Special Needs school
• 50% Very low achievers – won’t get any GCSEs
• 35% expect to get 2 GCSEs grade C

How has YOF helped?

The YOF panel kindly granted £2000 to Kingston & Wimbledon YMCA which has made a difference to the lives of the young people in the Dinton Field area.

During the year ‘Sports Room’ took place weekly on a Thursday evening at Dinton Field Pavilion (Canbury Ward) between 6.30pm and 9.30pm. The club was run by one paid part time youth worker supported by four volunteers and regularly attracted a cohort of 20 young people (with 38 on the books) aged 11-16.

The club used physical activity as a vehicle to do youth work and engage the young people and was effectively a general youth club with young people playing pool, football, netball and table tennis as well as programmed activities, e.g. cooking, discussion based graffiti and tug- of-war; as well plenty of chilling out with mugs of tea.

The youth club has given the young people positive activities to enjoy in a safe environment and have a lot of fun! More than this though, through developing relationships with the young people and involving them in decision making, these young people have been instilled with self-confidence and value by helping them develop in the activities that they have chosen to take part, e.g. by providing specialist football coaches.

What has happened since then?

An offshoot of engaging with these young people through ‘Sports Room’ has been, at the request of the young people, the formation of ‘Dance Room’ where five of the young people – 4 girls and a boy, take part in weekly dance sessions led by a YMCA youth worker / talented dancer. Again, this is very much youth work not a formal class. Young people attending these sessions have gone on to perform at fundraising events. Some young people attending ‘Sports Room’ have also gone on to attend the YMCA Youth Festival in Prague, in August 2008, and one girl undertook her work experience with the YMCA.

Since then, ‘Sports Room’ has taken a different route focussing on football at the YMCA’s Hawker Centre. 17 young people regularly attend the weekly sessions and are already talking of joining a league in the summer. The Hawker Centre offers the benefit of year round football afforded by the floodlit courts which can be used during the winter months. For those who did not want to pursue football or dance (at ‘Dance Room’), they were offered the opportunity to join St Peter’s Church’s (Norbiton) ‘Rock Solid’ youth club, which serves a similar type of young person.

Feedback

The general feedback from the young people is that the club was somewhere to go and somewhere to meet together. In conclusion, the YOF funding provided has helped the club to be successful as evidenced by the regular high number of young people attending, the fact that these young people have asked for us to provide further activities and that they have developed in confidence.