Staff: John Dumbell ,Habeba Ben Amer, Josef Rooney, Ella King
As our senior youth council have started to step away from attending the club regularly so the time has come to start looking for a new youth council to shape the work we do at the Shewsy. We are looking for 6 members, three males and three females aged 14-16.
With this in mind we selected a group of 12 young people who had shown an interest in becoming youth council representatives.
The weekend started with a Friday afternoon meet at the Shewsy, where we had a pre-trip meeting around behaviours and expectations for what we wanted to achieve over the weekend. Once this was out the way we set off and headed to our first planned stop at McDonalds near Burnley.
Once everyone was fed we had another 45 minute drive to Play Away. Upon arrival we were met by the lovely centre staff.
The first night consisted of lots of fun team building games, a session on what is a youth council and the introduction of our very own version of BBC’s the traitors where we selected 2 of the 12 young people to one by one eliminate the rest of the group without being caught out. This lasted the whole weekend with all the faithful voting each other out leaving Elliot and Bradley to win the Prize.
Some fun team games of an evening
On Saturday morning the group woke up to a full English breakfast, and a fire alarm test (thanks to John for burning the sausages).
After all helping with the clean up we made our own packed lunches and headed out on the minibus to Chapel Le Dale and walked through the scenic countryside and onto the ingleton falls waterfall trail finishing off with a town task in Ingleton.
The group at Chapel le Dale before the walk and on the bridge at Ingleton Falls.
Saturday evening we discussed issues affecting young people in our local area and ideas on how to address them. And finished off with a movie night in the main lounge, after not much sleep the previous night combined with the walk everyone was asleep much earlier.
Sunday Morning saw all the group clean up and leave the place as they found it, some found this easier than others. We then had a final session and a debrief where the young people were given the opportunity to put themselves forward for election to the new youth council.
Out of the 12 young people involved, 10 decided that they would like to continue on the wonder youth council with 8 up for election in the coming weeks.
As a result of this residential trip we will be hoping to elect 6 main youth council representatives with 1 Head Boy and 1 Head Girl.
John Dumbell
Senior Youth Worker
