By Roy Peach, Youth Leader

It’s a little over four months since lockdown started. For some they probably thought that when KYC closed its doors (early I hasten to add) in light of Covid-19 that that was it. Yeah right!

• We immediately launched Spaced Out. Virtual youth club ran fortnightly, then weekly. Well done to the young people for racking up the points for prizes.
• Some competitions were set. Congratulations if you won any of our amazing prizes – tickets to Blenheim Palace is probably the biggest win so far!
• Set up a wellbeing hotline that any young person could use.
• Food parcels were donated throughout the village to support people in need.
• Our fundraising team raised a phenomenal amount of funding. Without their efforts on quizzes, raffles, and grant applications we wouldn’t still be running. You can still raise funds for us via the 50:50 draw, online shopping, or even donate via our Amazon Wishlist. Simply search for Kennington Youth Club.
• All of our policies were updated, including writing new ones to cover Coronavirus.
• Action plans to return to face to face youth work were thrashed out and a small team met to begin designing youth work for the future following a survey available to anybody that wanted to complete it. Your feedback was invaluable.
• The social media had a bit of an overhaul. Our new Facebook page is up and running you can find us on Instagram too (youthclubkennington).
• Our committee and the trustees have spent hours contacting insurers, checking COSHH regulations, and dealing with all legal matters to ensure we are complying with government guidelines.
• Our youth leader has been liaising with colleagues in national organisations over plans to restart face to face work, and has received several requests to offer training and consultancy to other local groups.
• He was also sought out by a wellbeing organisation to be interviewed about youth work. This interview was recorded and included in future training.
• We held our AGM where the true extent of the hours we have pumped into the club were realised and recognised.
• The hall has been deep cleaned, marked up, and is ‘Covid-secure’ meaning private hirers are able to restart their classes.
• A vast amount of PPE has been purchased allowing us to restart face to face sessions.
• We set up the Climb Every Mountain event that anybody can join to keep you fit and healthy over the summer.
• We started village ‘walkabouts’ recently allowing us to reach out to members of the community and remind them we’re still around and haven’t stopped.
• Face to face youth work restarted with our first ‘bubble’ in Forest Side and this has proven very popular. To date, several sessions have taken place.
• Those that have attended Forest Side received a Spy Mission pack with a stack of challenges to see them through the summer hols, again with prizes attached.
• We are starting to plan for returning to the hall with youth work.
• A parent is doing a Mudder event, fundraising for the youth club.

For anybody that says everything shut down in March and young people have had nothing to do, I strongly beg to differ. Our team have worked flat out ensuring we continue to provide a service and stability for young people when they need it.

We are now starting to look to the future, not only in running youth work through this difficult time, but which direction the youth club will be going in the future.

One of the biggest things that we need at the moment are adults who are not shielding (or shielding others) who have First Aid certificates. If you have a DBS, even better, otherwise we can get this sorted. If you think you could offer help, for even a few hours here and there in the future, we would be extremely grateful, just get in touch.