Club Involved In Innovative Project for Youngsters

A unique partnership between Shropshire Youth, the Emerging Leaders charity and The Shrewsbury Club has been successfully piloted in Shrewsbury to help disadvantaged young people begin to achieve their potential.

The Stride Out project, which began in June, has provided 12 local teenagers not in education, employment or training with the chance to learn leadership skills. The dozen youngsters have grown in confidence and are now embarking on a series of fund raising events they have organised to raise money for Hope House and the Birmingham Children's Hospital.

Emma Linney, the transition team manager for Shropshire Youth Services IAG team, said the exciting partnership had proved to be rewarding for everyone involved.

"The Emerging Leaders charity along with The Shrewsbury Club and ourselves thought we could put together a very different motivational programme," she said. "We've worked in this area for many years but haven't done anything like this before.

"The idea of this project is built around leadership skills and it's the first pilot of its kind nationally.

"This is the first time Emerging Leaders have worked in the UK on a project of this kind. They wanted to trial the Leadership for Life programme they have run in other countries.

"This is about how young people can lead their own lives and give something back to the community, so that's been the essense of driving through the whole programme.

"I feel that it's been a real success and the young people involved have decided they are going to raise money for the Birmingham Children's Hospital and Hope House. They had to come up with their own ideas over who they wanted to raise money for.

"They attended group sessions with us as well as the Emerging Leaders for the first month. They've done employability skills, personal social development and community development day group sessions with ourselves.

"As part of that they're doing work experience for the second month and then the third month is the implementation of the community project."

Miss Linney, who hopes funding can be secured to continue this programme as a community concept, added: "These young people have been on our books as unemployed for some time and some of them have really disadvantaged backgrounds. This programme has really helped to boost their confidence and self esteem.

"The Shrewsbury Club have been brilliant and some of the young people have also gone and used the gym there. They've given them gym memberships which is great. Their members of staff have provided extra motivation, so it's been a complete partnership."

Dave Courteen, managing director of The Shrewsbury Club, said they were delighted to be supporting the programme and that several of their staff members had acted as mentors for the young people.

"It's great leadership training for some of our younger leaders," he said. "We're passionate about making an impact in the local community as we are The Shrewsbury Club for Shrewsbury people.

"We saw this as a great way of us actually providing a resource and support to people in the community who need it. It's another good thing for us to be doing to make an impact on the local community."

The Shrewsbury Club will be the venue for a charity car wash organised by the young people on Thursday, July 30 (10am-6pm) while they will also host an open mic/live bands night on Tuesday, August 4. A coffee and cake sale was held last weekend.

Steve Miles, the operations manager UK for Emerging Leaders, added: "While Emerging Leaders has been working successfully around the world for a number of years, delivering 'Leadership for Life' as part of the 'Stride Out' programme in partnership with Shropshire Youth has been its premier pioneering project in the UK.

"It's been exciting to see the young adults embracing the leadership principles, lead themselves and in so doing postively impact their community.

"These are amazing young people with enormous potential. It's just that interference, external and internal, has kept that potential small by affecting the way they think and the way they see themselves.

"They have been told for so long that they 'can't' or 'won't' that they have just lost sight of the reality that they 'can'. By re-awakening dreams and getting focused the future is brighter. What they have begun to understand and apply is that if you change your thinking, you can literally change your life; that we can't say no if we don't have a bigger yes."

The University Centre in Shrewsbury will evaluate the project when it is completed.