Week 2 of Inclusive Football Project

Tuesday night was our second session in our inclusive football project.

There was a massive turnout of young people from both out learning disabilities group and mainstream group.

Everyone took part in the session and we split the group into 4 teams and had 2 pitches running at the same time.

Everyone enjoyed themselves and were fully involved and supportive of one another.

 

Watch this space for some video interviews with young people and staff involved in this initiative!
 

Monday Night Trip to see Stomp The Musical!

On Monday Night, 5 young people had the opportunity to see Stomp at The Ambassadors Theatre in the West End.

The show was amazing and showed us all how you can make music and rhythm (not noise!) with anything from banana skins, lighters, brooms and basketballs.

We all really enjoyed ourselves and for some of us it was our first visit to the theatre. We hope we can do another trip like this in the future. 

May Half Term Trip To Chessington World of Adventures

During the May half term, a group of us went to Chessington World of Adventures.

The day started off very wet and miserable but as soon as we were on our way we forgot all about the gloomy weather.

We had lots of fun, went on loads of rides and enjoyed seeing some of the staff scared of even the gentlest of rides! 

This trip was made possible by the generosity of Help a Capital Child and we thank them very much for supporting us with this trip. 

Thursday Night

On Thursday night we had a general youth club evening.

Some of us enjoyed playing pool. 

We also had fun playing table football.

Some of us got creative and made some football themed craft stuff.

As the weather was nice, we played football outside and made lots of noise with some noisy trumpets we'd been decorating!

Inclusive Football Project

This week saw the next stage of our inclusive sports programme that is kindly being supported by London Youth and The Wembley National Stadium Trust.

We had more young people from the old library than expected which was a bonus for us.

The young people engaged in a very fast, fun and competitive match and everyone supported one another.

This project is running every Tuesday through June between 6.30pm and 8.30pm at Elm Green School in West Norwood. 

 

We have selected the last Tuesday in June for the first ever Rathbone Inclusive Sports Trophy where both youth groups will be competing in a football match.

We are hoping to make this an annual event for a range of sports.     

Cricket Project

We have recently been awarded £11,000 from the Wembley National Stadium Trust through London Youth.


This money will go towards providing sports projects for young people with disabilities.


In May we linked up with Surrey County cricket club and put on a programme of cricket sessions.

Some of us had never played cricket before, thought it was boring and had no interest in it! However by the end of the 1st session, everyone was engaged and really enjoying themselves.

 

This project was a fully integrated project between our learning disability group and our mainstream youth group.

This was a real success and some of us are now going to look into joining a cricket club!

We are all looking forward to coming back after half term and taking part in another inclusive sports project which will be football!

Half Term Residential at Hindleap Warren (Day 1 and 2)

On Monday 7th April 10 young people made their way to Hindleap Warren for 5 days of outdoor adventure, activity, fun and discovery.

We made our way down to the Ashdown Forest and were met on arrival by the very welcoming Hindleap staff.



Once we had been shown our rooms and give a tour of the surroundings we all sat down for lunch.

Our first activity of the week was called "Forest Adventure".



To many, this may sound like a casual stroll through the woods.....this was not the case!

Some of us were sporting some rather fetching outdoor clothing!

The group had so much fun climbing through the woods, walking knee high through streams and "puddles"!.

Everybody got involved and supported each other brilliantly.



After drying off, we spent the evening relaxing and getting know other members of the groups.

On Day 2 the group awoke and were eager and excited to get on with their activities. The first set of activities were teamwork activities.

Everybody was very keen to get involved and to support each other. the activities challenged everybody to communicate, encourage, problem solve and work together.



Our next activity was "high ropes", this was really fun and quite scary but everyone took part and attempted the activity.

 

We had a really enjoyable second day and are looking forward to the rest of our activities.

         



Code of Conduct and Fruit Sushi....

Tonight the group sat down together and began to discuss and design a code of conduct. The idea is that it is the young peoples club, so they should discuss, agree and implement their own rules. This is to give them some ownership as well as a sense of responsibility.



 

 

This will be an ongoing piece of work and is something that the group are enjoying and looking forward to developing.

 

After the first hour of tonights session, the group took part in a cooking activity making fruit sushi. This was really fun, messy and most importantly tasted good!

 

 

The Ingredients that we used were- fresh fruit, marshmallow rice krispies, tortilla wraps, honey and chocolate sauce!

 

 

Here are the finished products!

 

Banana Surgery and Desert Island Essentials

Tonight the group took part in some activities that focused on teamwork, communication, emotions and imagination.

The first game we played was called "Banana Surgery". The aim of the game was to peel a banana and cut the banana into 5 pieces. Once this was done, in pairs we were tasked with attempting to piece the banana back to as near to its original look as possible using only cocktail sticks, sticky tape, string and elastics bands.

The game was really fun, messy and enabled us to communicate with each other, share ideas and be creative. Below are the final efforts of the group.

This game was great for enabling us to recognise and appreciate that relationships, events and reputations can be easily broken, damaged or taken apart. However they are not always as easy to put back together. This game got us all thinking about ourselves and our relationships.

We finished the evening with a fun game based on the idea that we were all about to be dropped on a desert island. We all had to choose the 1 thing we thought would help us to survive on the island. There were some weird, wonderful and cleverly thought out ideas.

Once everybody had decided their 1 item and explained why they thought it would help us on the island, we then had a group vote to decide the 5 most wanted items we would take with us. 

Tonight we also said goodbye to one of our youth workers, Abigail. Abi has been an amazing member of the team and will be missed by everyone.

Next week is half term so there are no evening clubs. However we have 3 off site activites taking place- Go-Karting, Cinema trip and a trip to the national youth orchestra.

Young Peoples Feedback Discussion Evening

This evening we sat as a group and took part in a feedback discussion. We discussed a number of issues and ideas that we have for the youth club.

The discussion was really good and gave us the opportunity to have our voices heard and to feel a part of the decision making process.

Below you will find some of the questions and answers from the session. We really hope that you enjoy reading them.

Why do you come to Youth Club?

“I come to youth club to talk to my friends and to see my friends”.

“It gets me out the house and doing something more meaningful than playing my xbox”

“ I come to Rathbone club to have fun and to make new friends”

“ I enjoy going out with the group and learning new things”

“I have improved my communication and teamwork skills” 

“To feel a part of a community”

Where there any questions you’d have liked to ask staff before you joined?

“Will I get on with the other members?”

“How much does it cost?”

“Can I speak to anyone before coming if I am nervous?”

“Will staff help me?”

What Is important to you?

“Finishing college and getting a job”

“Getting a girlfriend and getting married”

“Going to University”

“Being safe and knowing my family are safe”

“To learn new things”

“To love and respect myself”

 

Things you’d like to change?

“To take part in more challenging activities, such as abseiling and camping in the woods”

“ Having a better equipped facility”

“Having more desktop computers rather than tablets”

“Having more female members”

 

Are staff able to support you?

“Staff are always there if I need to talk to someone”

“Staff give me good advice”

“Staff listen to me and allow me to express myself”

“Staff know how to manage my behaviour”

“Staff comfort me when I am upset”



Chinese New Year Celebration

Tonight the group spent the session celebrating Chinese New Year.

 

We spent the evening making Chinese Lanterns and decorating Porcelain Dragons.

 

Some of us also prepared and cooked a vegetable stir fry. We sat together as a group and ate the meal. Everyone enjoyed the food and had a great evening!

Bob "Rathbone" Marley!

Tonight we embraced the annual event of black history month by watching a documentary style movie about the life of Bob Marley.

The film was really interesting and provoked a lot of discussion and debate about him and his life.

We had a bit of a quiz about what we had seen on the film and tested each others knowledge on the songs made famous by Bob Marley and about his outlook on life.

Who knew that he once lived down the road in Stockwell?!

New Term, New Equipment

On Tuesday 10th September we started back at youth club.

We took ownership of 6 brand new nexus notebooks, we will be able to access the Internet, play games and much more on the go!

We had a group chat about what everyone got up to during the summer, some people stayed in England and enjoyed the small amount of sunshine we had and some of us went as far away as Spain and Thailand!

Next week we shall be setting up our new wireless keyboards to use with the netbooks!

Summer Day Trip To Littlehampton

On Friday 30th August 6 young people and 2 family members took up the opportunity to visit Littlehampton on a day trip with Rathbone.

We set off at 9am without any delays!

After negotiating our way through the traffic of Croydon, we had a clear run through to Littlehampton.

On arrival we made our way down to the beach, the weather was overcast so there wasn't many people around. Some of us were brave enough to dip our toes....and knees into the sea! It was freezing!

Some of us had fun drawing and writing in the sand before we dried off and went for a fun game of crazy golf.

                 

After golf we took a walk along the seafront and found the fairground and a nice restaurant we we stopped for lunch. Some of us embraced the surroundings by having fish and chips whereas some stuck to burgers!

After lunch we entered the fairground and went on a number of different rides as well as playing on the arcade machines.

At 3pm we left Littlehampton and made out way back to West Norwood.

The day was really fun and we all enjoyed ourselves.