As part of one of our sessions in Thorntree we practiced Yoga. Before hand, some of the young people spoke about how they had never taken part in any kind of Yoga before, and those who said they had previously engaged with it within school said they didn’t enjoy that experience. One of the young people in this session, who engages with us on a weekly basis, often struggles to communicate effectively with other young people and staff; however, once he realised that yoga was part of the session he began fully engaging in the activities, and even went out of his way to encourage other young people to take part.

After the other young people had joined in on the Yoga session, this young person was then asked by the instructor to demonstrate some of the yoga postures. He was visibly thrilled to be made a positive example of, and during the session the other young people taking part praised him for how well he had carried out certain poses.

The following week, this young person came in with quite a different attitude to the session; he made more conversation than he usually would, and readily took part in activities despite there already being a number of young people taking part – which previously would have been daunting for him. For this young person this is a huge achievement, and he is continuing to do extremely well.

Hannah, our Lead Youth Worker and a Paediatric Haemoglobinopathies Clinical Nurse Specialist hosted our first Teen Social Day for Sickle Cell patients, giving them the opportunity to socialise and enjoy activities they wouldn’t normally get to do! It was a success and the young people really enjoyed it, thanks to Newcastle Hospital Charity for allowing us this opportunity! Now onto planning our next one! 

We recruited 5 young people from the Redcar area who were interested in becoming young inspectors. All 5 of the young people met up with some Middlesbrough young people and they were trained up in a 3 hour session based on what a young inspector was and how to be a good one. The young people had chance to ask questions and engage with the young people who had done inspections in the past. The young people took part in some crucial team building activities which taught them about personal boundaries, professionalism and communication skills. Since taking part in our training, these young inspectors, inspected 7 organisations during the summer holidays funded by HAF. The young people reported that the training really helped them become the best young inspector and gave them skills they needed to pick up on different things in the organisations.

Spaces projects give young people the opportunity to take part in social action that benefits their community. Over the last 4 years, we have completed a range of projects with young people from across Middlesbrough. Projects have ranged from activity bags for other young people, and Christmas hampers for local community members, to community fun days and a celebration event after COVID to celebrate the amazing work community members had done.

Young people living in Middlesbrough are passionate about bringing their community together and hosting a variety of community fun days with the aim of reducing people being lonely. Each event has been well attended and young people have received a lot of positive feedback.

North Ormesby in recent months has become one our busiest sessions with a core group of young people coming each week and bringing new faces along with them too.

This group in particular enjoy getting involved in the arty elements of our work and enjoy seeing new external partners come along such as arts and craft workshops, dance companies or animal encounters. In this session, staff also welcome the young people to cook as much as they would like to and get them to give us recipes they would like to try and share with their peers from a variety of different cultures.

The young people like having the opportunity to utilise the Multi Sports area in the Summer months and go down there to play multi sports activities and football with the staff and sports coaches.

During North Ormesby Youth Club, 8 young people engaged throughout the 7 weeks of this junior campaigner’s project. The first few weeks of the project, Dan and Caitlin introduced themselves and the project with the young people, and found out what they were passionate about – to help make change in their local area. The young people were torn between; helping people with mental health issues and creating wellbeing packs for them or helping people who are homeless; creating packs for them, and donating them to a homeless shelter in Middlesbrough town.

The young people decided their passion was to help the homeless, and began thinking about what they would like do. Over the next week they designed and created a poster with helpful information on it, to be put around Middlesbrough and North Ormesby. They then created a list of the things they would like to put in the care packs: hand warmers, gloves, socks, blankets, toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, wipes, a refillable water bottle, lots of tinned food, and sanitary items. And the following week they began the task of putting all of the packs together, working as a team to get 20 made up, ready for the next step. Staff members then delivered these packs to their chosen homeless shelter in Middlesbrough, called Doorways – being sure to drop off some of the posters the young people created so that they could advertise themselves.

We are absolutely thrilled that Lucy Brannan from our group at Springwell, Gateshead won the Young Charity Champion of the Year award at the North East Charity Awards 2024. Well done Lucy!