YPDG Blog: April

Hiking

Hi, welcome to our blog. We are the Young people’s Development Group (YPDG). We are young people who have come together to help create Horizon Youth Zone in Grimsby. This blog is to keep a log of our progress and achievements as we continue to work towards the opening of Horizon Youth Zone and the many opportunities that it will bring.

Welcome back! April has been a very busy month for us as a group. We even had our first in-person meeting at the end of the month!

At the start of April, we had a visit from a person who works for the institute for the future of work. We did a JAM board so that all of our ideas could be shared. Some questions that we answered were: What makes for good work experience, what determines whether you’ll have good work and what makes work, good work? It was really interesting for us all to discuss different views and ideas. After this, we had a little bit of time left so we worked more on our fundraising quiz.

Towards the middle of the month, we were asked to come up with a few quotes about what we as young people get out of this group and what the benefits will be to young people when Horizon opens. A few things we came up with were that this group has improved our confidence, we have made new friends, the Youth Zone enables young people to look beyond their limits and gives them something positive to do in their spare time. We then finalised our plans for the quiz and started sending the invite to friends and family.

On the 19th April, we had a zoom call with the 3rd EyE youth empowerment group. Me, Harriet and Rachel gave a presentation on Horizon Youth Zone and OnSide to the group so that they would get a better idea of what we are doing. And then, they showed us a few videos of things they do, as well as having young people talk about their experiences with the group. We all found it really exciting and interesting to talk to them. We discovered that Grimsby and New Bedford actually have a lot in common, for example, Grimsby is known for its fishing industry and New Bedford had a massive Whaling industry. As well as talking about our youth groups, we also got to know the young people in their group and we got talking about lots of things, like how different schools are in America and England. We are all really looking forward to our next zoom call with them and to developing our partnership further.

The following week we talked about what the future holds for our partnership with 3rd EyE. We are hoping that maybe next year, our group will be able to go over to Boston to meet them in person and also hopefully, they will be able to come over and see some of our Youth Zones and visit Grimsby. We then discussed the National Lottery Heritage Fund to hopefully get some funding for Horizon Youth Zone and for the group. As this is a fund about heritage, we brainstormed what heritage is to us and we talked about Grimsby’s heritage. Remembering our heritage is important and we hope to incorporate Grimsby’s heritage into Horizon Youth Zone so that the past can be shown as well as looking at the bright future with Horizon.

The last meeting of the month was a very different session to usual because for the first time in over a year, we had a meeting in person. It was really great to see people face to face and to be able to share our ideas without being cut out by bad Wi-Fi or hearing “you’re muted”. Unfortunately, the weather was quite bad with it raining and being very cold, but we had our blankets to keep us warm. It was certainly a challenge with our big sheets of paper flying away but we managed to still sort out the quiz so that it was completely ready for Saturday..

We hope you enjoyed reading our progress in April. See you in a month to hear about how our fundraising quiz went and other exciting things that we have been doing.