Find out what Zoe got up to during her week with us by reading her article below. Our Youth Workers are passionate about sharing their love of youth work with the next generation, so if you’d like to do your Work Experience week with us or are interested in becoming a Young Volunteer then please get in touch!
My name is Zoe and this past week I have been doing work experience with SNYE. They are a charity that aims to help young people and provide safe spaces such as their youth clubs for us to socialize with other people our age.
This week, I have observed the role of a youth leader and learnt what happens to help put the youth clubs together. I go to the Friday night youth club for ages 11-16 so seeing what work gets put into making it fun for us was helpful.
On Monday, I attended a Brackley Town Council meeting where one of SNYE’s young volunteers/ councillors presented a speech about streetlights and the importance of having more around popular areas, such as the leisure centre- one of the most used spaces by young people, to ensure safety for everyone. He also spoke about how SNYE would like to use the council spaces for free to run fundraisers and summer fetes. The young leaders were very supportive towards him and the speech went very well.
On Tuesday, I went to the younger youth club at the library in Brackley. This youth club is ages 9-12 and some of the activities the young people liked were ping pong, playing on the Nintendo Switch and playing Jenga. Sometimes the volunteers and young leaders get involved and the young people like to chat with us as well. This helps them become more sociable and feel as if they can talk to us if they ever have a problem and it gives them a place of safety and security. Prior to the session, I went through some training with Molly, one of SNYE’s youth leaders. We went through health and safety, safeguarding, what to do if… and the general rules of youth club.
On Wednesday, I visited Towcester. I went to the younger and older youth clubs and I enjoyed my visit. One observation I made was that the Towcester youth club was more relaxed and calmer than Brackley- for both groups. The young people were so nice and introduced themselves to me and made an effort to make me feel included. We had Sue there from the NAYC, and we made balloon cars with the younger group, and we played cubs with the older group. The older group was very quiet, compared to our one at Brackley! We played a game called cubs that Sue had brought and it was very fun and a calm game because of small numbers of attendees.
On Friday, I went to the youth club in Brackley for 11-16 year olds. I normally go to this every Friday so I already knew what to expect. I already knew all of the volunteers and most of the young people. I helped set up the tuck shop and then we played football as per usual. We have a larger group of young people compared to the other groups but we have a larger space too in the leisure centre hall. We have many activities, Such as basketball, football, drawing and sometimes pickleball.
Everyone was nice this week and I enjoyed doing work experience with SNYE. I liked that I visited other groups and saw what their youth clubs were like compared to the one I go to on Friday.