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Maxwelltown Information Centre

Proposal code: CONSUL-2023-02-12

MAXyouth Groups - The award will be used to part fund our youth workers for 2023/2024

The award will be used to part fund our youth workers for 2023/2024 .Our workers allow us to provide 11 popular weekly garden workshops for local schools and nurseries. They also deliver 2 weekly after school clubs, a youth cooking group and our award winning holiday garden club.

The funding will be used to employ 2 youth workers and a youth sessional worker to plan, develop and manage all the following youth sessions:

• Our Garden is attended by our 4 local primary schools, 3 local nurseries and 1 high school. In the 3 weeks of term time in January alone the Garden was attended by 142 different young people. Weekly we deliver 11 sessions over 4 days in the Garden, with sessions focusing on outdoor educational activities. Our young people take part in various activities in the Garden from Pond dipping to arts and crafts, the main focus of the sessions are growing fruit and vegetables in our award winning community garden. This empowers young people, giving them the confidence to take the skills they've learned in the garden and use them within school and at home. We have very positive relationships with our local schools and nurseries and a high demand for sessions.

• Our After School Clubs run 2 evenings a week and we currently support 25 different children from the local area. The club focuses on free play, creativity and being outdoors all year round – the clubs are very much led by our young people as they often choose and develop their own activities that our youth workers facilitate.

• Our Youth Cooking Group is attended by 8 local secondary school pupils on a Thursday evening. The groups focuses on developing cooking skills, learning to use produce from our community garden and overall increasing our young people’s confidence and leadership skills. The group prepares healthy dishes that they can take home and share with their family. Each month our Youth Cook Group prepares and serves local elderly residents who are isolated in the community through the “Come Dine with Us” initiative. This intergenerational project has broken down barriers between older and younger members of the community through food and conversation and has become an important part of our Youth Cook Group.

• Our Garden club runs over the Easter, Summer and October School holidays, Monday – Thursday 10am-3pm. Last year we had 162 different participants over the 10 weeks. Our club is always fully booked with a waiting list. This year we will run our Holiday club over the many In-service days that occur throughout the year. This will allow children who are on our waiting list for the clubs to experience the Garden during one-off sessions. The grant would also fund a sessional worker during the holidays. This additional worker means we can safely provide access for up to 20 different young people each day.  All our youth activities are delivered free of charge to our youths with no barriers to participation.

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