INTRODUCTION
This reflection is about a recent visit to one of our Young People Forward projects we have taking place in Batley with the Training Cave. I was lucky enough to go meet the deliverers and young people involved in the project and what ensued was eye opening, humbling and an incredible learning experience.
WHAT WAS GOING ON?
The Young People Forward Project which started in October 2020 and will be finishing in September 2021, aims to use sport to improve the physical and mental health, self-efficacy and resilience of young people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness across the North of England and Scotland. For us locally, we have been working with specialist local community organisations already engaging with the target group to embed sport and physical activity sessions into their programme.
The project has been a bit of a rollercoaster with restrictions adding countless challenges. However the time has come where deliverers have been able to start their programmes and have a real impact on the young people they are working with. One of these projects is at the Training Cave in Birstall. The boxing club has built relationships with local youth organisations around their local area and this includes Home Group, a local charity providing integrated housing, health and social care. The Training Cave and Home Group worked with their young people to put together an action plan that had young peoples voice at the forefront and deliver a programme that would run through the spring and summer.
It has been great to hear how this project has been progressing and I was very keen to meet the humans behind it, in real life! This includes the owners who run the place and the young people themselves.
I booked to meet them w/c 7th June and went with no agenda or main take-aways, I just wanted to get to know them and the young people.
HOW WAS I FEELING?
I was pretty nervous to be honest! On a few different levels. The first is that I haven't met many new people (generally) face-to-face for a long long time. How do you do small talk again? How do you give good first impressions? The second level was that I knew meeting these young people was so important and that making the right first impressions and instilling trust from the get-go was paramount.
All worries disappeared immediately when I arrived. First of all they have two lovely dogs who are always a great icebreaker. The owners couldn't have been more accommodating and made a cracking brew. Being put at ease pretty much instantly I was able to be myself and managed some banter with the young people which then turned into an impromptu boxing session!
WHAT MEANING DO I MAKE OF THIS?
There is a whole lot of meaning to this but I think the biggest takeaways were the learnings of actually meeting the young people and what impact this will have on future projects.
Once the boxing session had finished and the young people left, I stayed to have a chat with the owners who run the club. A real positive was them letting me know how open the young people were with me and how that's not the case with every adult that comes to the club. This has stuck with me ever since and makes me 1000% more confident to go see as many young people involved in the YPF project as possible.
However, the rest of our conversations were completely eye opening as to what these young people have been / are going through. Each young person has their own challenges and story that drew so many emotions on lot's of different levels. How the system has let them down and the chaos they experience on a daily basis. I will never be able to fully comprehend what they have gone through but trying to understand as much as I can and how we at YSF can have an impact in any way is very important to me.
On reflection I think especially with this project and some more where we are often the broker, it's hard to imagine or see the viewpoints of the actual people at the other end. Working with partners who have a strong connection with the young people is paramount and abiding by our values of trust and teamwork is essential to having a real impact.
WHAT CAN I EXPERIMENT WITH NEXT TIME?
Next time it would be good for me to walk away with more qualitative information on the project however sourcing this in an informal way. Case studies and news stories etc are so important to the larger picture of national projects like this but how can this information be gathered in a safe (permissions) way whilst still maintaining a trustworthy and less formal relationship. I understand this approach will be different from partner to partner but some food for thought.
Photo by Arisa Chattasa on Unsplash