Hello. It’s been a while. I’m sorry about that.
I have been busy with a huge amount of youth worker-y things that demand my time and attention, so please forgive my online absence. I do plan to keep posting here.
This coming weekend I’m back in Eastbourne for Youthwork The Conference where I’ll be running a session titled ‘Replacing the Youth Service‘. It’s a provocative subject, but rather than criticise what’s happening to the statutory youth sector, I’ll be looking at the opportunities and issues for voluntary agencies to get involved. To that end, you can read a new blog post I’ve written on the Conference website here. It’s the entry called ‘Opportunity In The Community’. here’s the intro:
When I was a teenager, there was a thriving youth club in my town. Although girls had been welcome for many years, and lots attended, everyone still called it “the boys club”. It was rough and ready with questionable health and safety, but people loved going along mainly due to ‘Big Al’ who kept a strict but fair eye over the place. It was open nearly five nights a week and excelled at sports with hundreds of trophies for pool, table tennis and boxing lining the walls.
As a young unqualified youth worker I worked one evening a week at the club. It was often challenging and sometimes chaotic, but was still well used by the local young people. I learned a lot of valuable lessons there – experiences I would never have got from just volunteering at my church (which I did for years).
Today I’m a trustee of that youth club, but right now it’s struggling to survive