Weekly Update 21.07.20

We hope you all had great weekends and the start to your weeks are going well.

From scavenger hunts and baking to awareness activities around self-esteem and self-care, last week saw the Youth Work team build both fun and education into their online activities for young people. Across the week these included:

• Young Women’s Group – Justina created a brilliant worksheet for young people to work through at their leisure, focused on self-esteem, enhancing young people’s understandings around the importance in respecting themselves, recognising their qualities and exercising healthy self talk. 
• Dinner and Lunch & Debate – young people were encouraged by Lisa to step back and check in on whether they are taking time for self-care. Charlotte’s sessions took a lighthearted but thought provoking stance, through an interactive poll and separate worksheet of true/false fun facts. Sneezes regularly exceed 100MPH, the black box in an aeroplane is black – what do you think?? (scroll to the end to find out….)
• Scavenger Hunting – young people were challenged to see how quickly they could find and research a number of items (image above), the 3 to send in their photos fastest having the chance of winning a £10 love2shop voucher kindly donated by TK Maxx! A BIG well done to the winners who got their entries in impressively quickly!!
• Fitness and baking tutorials – giving young people ideas for positive ways to spend their time to support their mental health and wellbeing and discourage against more risky behaviours. 
• 1:1 check-in’s – a number of lovely conversations were held as a result of staff checking in one young people or young people getting in touch themselves. 
• 1:1 mentoring sessions – another week of positive mentoring sessions, as part of Justina’s 6 week mentoring programme. Please do feel free to get in touch if you would like to find out more about making referrals for these (justina@didcottrain.org.uk Facebook: @JustinaTRAIN). Further information and forms can also be found through here.  

As we ease out of lockdown, it seems quite mindboggling that it’s suddenly somehow mid July, with most schools breaking up this week! In light of this, alongside us continuing to work hard to support all young people currently engaging with us, we encourage you to spread the word about our provision to help us in making as many as we can in the area aware of our activities over their time off.  Although it is a blessing young people will be able to spend more time outside over their break, having the option to see what the team have going on digitally is likely to still be valuable for many – from those who are still feeling conscious about heading out or may not have close friendships, to those who would like the occasional chat for support or a boost. 

Our timetable for the coming week is attached below, which will continue to be refreshed and posted towards the beginning of each week through our @DidcotTRAIN Facebook and Twitter pages. To receive updates on what the team are offering for each session and to get involved, young people just need to friend/follow Youth Worker’s professional social media accounts:

Facebook: @JustinaTRAIN, @LisaTRAIN, @CharlotteTRAIN and @HarryTRAIN. 

Instagram: @charlottedidcottrain @lisadidcottrain @justina.train @harry.train.7568 

They are also welcome to give them a call through their numbers, as shown on the timetable. Any more general questions please feel free to give us a call on 07458306358 – please note this is now new replacing our old number of 07305042427! For more information about our current provision, please head to the following page. Lastly if you wish to sign up to receive email notifications for our weekly updates and monthly newsletter, we’d love to add you! The sign up link can be found through the bottom of the homepage. 

Otherwise, we hope your weeks go well and a particular congratulations to all the teachers who are breaking up for Summer – we hope you all have hugely well deserved breaks after your incredible challenge of a past few months. We continue to think of all those who are still working incredibly hard as a result of the pandemic, appreciating its impact is still very much a reality for many of you. 

Fingers crossed for a sunny few weeks ahead both for the weather and the circumstances and thank you as always for your support to us. Take care all. 

Best wishes, 

The TRAIN Team 

Answers: 1. Yes, can you believe  2. It’s orange!