Duke of Edinburgh Awards - by Sophie Lacey

Duke of Edinburgh (D of E) is an award for young people. It has three separate awards within the award it’s self. The first is bronze, for young people aged 14-15, Silver, for young people aged 15-16 and Gold for young people aged 16-25. To achieve this award you must have a skill, something new that you have learnt and pursued with for 3months, physical, a sport or physical activity for 3 months and service, a volunteering activity or something that helps your community. For bronze you must do 10 miles walking over 2 days and 1 night camping, sliver is 25miles walking over 3 days and 2 nights camping and gold is 50 miles walking 5days and 3nights camping. All participants must cook on trangias and walk with all their stuff.

Many of our members in our youth clubs are working towards a DofE award. 15 young people last year aged 14-16 achieved the Bronze and Silver award. Courtney Bush, Paige Courtney, Shannon Hooper, Lauren Pash, Sophie Lacey, Michael Broad, Ieuan Helan (From Eastmoors). Chelsea Copp, Lucy Shannahan, Alisha Bellsmythe, Chelsea Voysey, Kirsty Ostler (From Tremorfa). Clodagh Meehan, Shanice Burnett, Shannon Bull (from Adamsdown), all received their award on the 6^th Decemeber 2010 in the where rugby players Jamie Roberts and Leigh Halfpenny gave the awards to the young people. 

Youth club member Michael Broad said, “I think D of E has been on the best experiences of my entire life, It allowed me to make new friends and also gave me the opportunity to experience walking and the country. Yes, there was arguments, blood, sweat and tears but without trying to sound cliché it was amazing. I can’t wait to carry onto sliver and have more good experiences with my friends because of D of E”

Chelsea Copp from Tremorga youth club said, “D of E is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life I’m proud that I have completed Sliver and I’m going to push myself to continue with sliver and hopefully onto Gold”

Youth Workers by Stars News team

This article is about the youth workers of the youth centres Eastmoors, Tremorfa and Adamsdown.

Billy Hillman

Billy is the boss of all three youth centres he is a lively, funny person and he is always kind, he takes us on many residentials and takes us to loads of fun places. He gets all the money for us to go on residentials and he organises them all so they are to all our needs.

‘He is caring supporting and hilariously funny’ says Sophie Lacey.

Theresa Sullivan

Theresa is the manager of Tremorfa and Adamsdown, she is a friendly person and she always has activities for us to do, she helps us with the reality baby course and also makes occasional cards with us.

‘She is a kind, funny and relaxed person’ says Shannon Bull.

Natalie Stockwell

Is the main worker of Eastmoors. She is a very calm person and helps us if we have any problems. She also helps us learn about important things such as contraception and the dangers of sexual intercourse.

‘Natalie is a cool, happy fun person’ Says Michael Broad.

Rebecca Sullivan

Is a very relaxed worker who is always very happy and is willing to participate in any activities we need help with, Rebecca is also very good with animals so if we need any information she will help us.

Phillippa Sullivan

Phillippa also known as ‘Pippa’ is a wonderful person she is also a great dance teacher with both senior and junior young people, she is really helpful and really funny. She is entertaining and always helps us and does things with us.

‘Pippa is a great person and has given lots of people the opportunity to dance she is loved so much’ Says Shanice Burnett

Portia Nicholson

Portia is a very kind person, weird in some ways but we still love her. She helps with things and is the one helping us with this newspaper project. She is really funny and does a lot of funny things like ripping her trousers whilst trying to dance.

‘Portia is an amazing youth worker as she does a lot for us and is really supportive’ says Shannon Bull.

Luke Sheppard

Luke is a really helpful worker (which is unusual for males) he helps is with our DofE. This is why he was nominated for youth worker of the year. He collected his award with all his young pupils all supporting him.

‘Luke is an awesome youth worker and totally deserved it’ says Shanice Burnett.

Kyle Dunkley

Kyle is helpful to the singers who he works with, he helps the singers improve and gain confidence for when we hold our talent events.

He is always working with the singers such as Courtney Bush, Paige Courtney, Sophie Lacey, Michael Broad and the juniors with Savannah Reed, Leah Hall, Jessica Tarry and many more!

‘Kyle is a great singer’ says Shannon Hooper

Siwan Bennett

Siwan Is a very stylish and funny weirdo, ‘She is the best youth worker’ says all of the young people. She does hair and beauty with us and she is very nice, kind and caring we all love her.

Youth Events by Stars News Team

We have had some great achievements during this year. Pride of place goes to Rebecca Sullivan and Brooke and Carrigan Gristock who represented Wales in the NACYP International Athletics Championships becoming the first from Eastmoors to represent Wales and gain International vests. This year we hope to have a few more.

In the Cardiff Youth Events, we also had a number of successes, singer Ellie Hanson was the Cardiff junior singing champion and dancers Amy Atkinson, Ellie Hanson, Courtney James and Savannah Reed won the junior Cardiff Streetdance and went to the National Finals in Newtown. They were also joined by the junior football team who were Cardiff youth events winners.

In our own talent competition, Savannah Reed (singing) had a standing ovation as she won the junior catagory with dancer James Murphy runner up and Courtney Bush gave the judges ‘shivers’ singing her way to victory with Paige Courtney runner up. Our two teams also done well in the D of E cooking competition as did our pool players with Billy Hall leading the way for the boys and Nicole Davies the girls.

In our presentation awards this year, junior boy of the year was Billy Hall, junior girl Carrigan Gristock and senior boy was Michael Broad with a joint senior girl award going to Courtney Bush and Sophie Lacey. This year there will be a much harder test to choose the winners with so many wonderful young people achieving so much.

A final word of congratulations to Luke Sheppard who followed up last years award of D of E participant of the year with a brilliant achievement of Cardiff Youth Worker of the year. Well done Luke, we are all very proud of you.

InterACT Project - by Micheal Broad

InterACT is a community project funded by the Citizenship foundation, the project works with young people from different backgrounds and  minorities. Their purpose is to create a better community in  which they live.  The project was run by Eastmoors youth worker Luke Sheppard and Victoria Jones from the ESOL Service. The project started in June and has been going on for sixth months, in the process new friends were created. A news paper entitled ‘InterACT news’ was created.  Luke Sheppard one of the project leaders said “I had previously worked with a group of asylum seeker refugees with an ESOL group from the parade and when I was given the opportunity to support local young people working with Asylum seeker refugees together to run their own social action project I jumped at the chance!”

As a group I feel the most important thing InterACT has achieved is allowing us to make friends with different people from different backgrounds, helping us learn of different cultures  and learn  that people from different countries aren’t as bad as they are made out to be by people from some parts of our community. We also created a newspaper which lets us show the community what us as youths have done to improve our community, we did this to help change the stereotypes that all youths are bad.

We made the  news paper in Talgart in Brecon on a brilliant and fun residential. On the Residential we got to go to Llangorse activity centre were we crossed high ropes and  experienced the climbing walls. Apart from having lots of funthe point of the residential was to write the InterACT newspaper.

On one day we gathered together and discussed what to write in our newspaper, we decided that the main point was our community, what it has to offer and what we have done for our community. We then wrote drafts of our Articles.
Im glad we got the opputunity to take part in the project and the residential as the people on our trip were from different countries and backgrounds, this meant we got to try different types of food from all over the world.

Our finished newspaper was printed in December and we had a launch party to celebrate!

Summer Review - Eastmoors hits the parks!

Summer Review

Arson reduction project
Thanks to a £10,000 pound Arson reduction grant in conjunction with Communities First Eastmoors Youth Centre ran six outreach sessions in the local parks. We ran many different workshops with an Arson Reduction message at the core of all the activities. We had face painting, special effects wounds, tee-shirt designing, poster making and football to name just a few of the activities on offer.
We also had visits from the local fire fighters and their fire truck, which were a great hit with the kids and grownups alike. The project was a great success with approximately 60 children and young people attending.

Art in the park
Throughout the summer the young people who attend Adamsdown youth provision were involved in an art project to enhance Helen Park. We had an artist come to work with them to create pottery tiles and wood carvings and at the end of the summer all the work was put on display for the public with a big launch party.

It’s a knockout
This was the end of our summer programme and with Communities First and other agencies we ran a community event the likes of never seen before in the area, with giant inflatablefree face painting,  rock climbing and laser tag. Although it rained on and off it didn’t dampen the fun had by both competitors and spectators. The whole event was free to the community who turned out on mass to support the 8 teams that took part. We estimated around 600 spectators turned up to this fantastic event. We hope that we can repeat this event this summer and make it an annual event, but we will need support from all the local community to make this happen.

Eastmoors does Europe.

The European Youth in Action programme  has completely transformed the youth provisions at Eastmoors, Tremorfa and Adamsdown. The youth in Action 1.2 youth initiatives give young people a real opportunity to develop projects that really interest them. This newspaper is one of those projects that has been provided with a grant that allows them to produce over 1000 copies of the paper every three months for a year.

 It has allowed them to go on a group residential for three days prior to the production of each newspaper and has provided the materials and equipment to make this a long last and exciting project.  There are also two other exciting youth intitives running, the first is a drama project which will end in ou own production called ‘Gross’ not ‘Grease’ to be performed for the whole community in April with singing and dancing by our brilliant performers. We have another project teaching other young people across not only Cardiff but the rest of Wales, on how to use the brilliant Youth in Action programme.

We are currently waiting on a forth project to develop a great programme aimed at teenage girls.
Another action 1.1 youth exchanges, is also helping to change and shape the lives of young people in Splott, Adamsdown and Tremorfa. Last March a group went to Norway to do snow activities and this January  another group will go to Lithuania to learn about mental health and welfare and in February some of our fantastic singers and dancers are going to Latvia for 11 days on a drama project. 14 year old Sophie Lacey , one of the Latvia participants said “ I really can’t wait to go, it looks like a fun experience and educational meeting new people from lots of other countries.”
We have had guests to Eastmoors from as far away as Russia, Bosnia and Serbia to name a few, on a range of projects that have included  a study visit, a job shadow, a training course and a feasibility visit and we have much planned for 2011.