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From: Bridge Street: Reports for Annual Church Meeting
Youth Club has continued well. After deciding to limit the nmnbers in the group we have a fairly stable group of about 30 or so 7-11 year olds who come and go from week to week, all of who have a unique ability to exhaust any leader who makes the mistake of trying to keep up with them!
The leaders continue to lead with their usual enthusiasm, and are constantly amazed at what the children will think of to do next! The highlight of the children's evening remains the Tuck Shop, but they still participate in craft activities, games, pool, football, video, music and cooking. We also try to have special events occasionally such as a disco and taking them to Breakers. Every now and then an idea will take the group and they will pretend something for most of the evening, for example we've had weddings and re-enactments of the "Mask of Zorro" (without the killings!).
Unfortunately, we were not able to put into action our initial plans of restarting Pontoon for the older group of children. This is a shame considering the lack of activities for this age group, however they do have specific needs which we didn't feel we could cater for at this time. This is a decision which we will have to revisit before September as 80% of our current group would be due to move up, and we obviously do not want to lose contact with them entirely.
Also we have lost a nunber of leaders over the last year or so, and our thanks go to them for all the hard work they have put in. Reading back over the last couple of years reports, we have always asked for new leaders, with mixed results, but it would be good if people thought again about whether they could make some level of commitment to help. Youth Club runs from 7-8.15pm so even with setting up and putting away it is only two hours out of a Friday evening. Don't think "I could only do one evening every half term, it's not worth volunteering". If we could get a pool of people who would be willing to commit at that level it would relieve the pressure on the rota. No one does it every week and we take it in turns to organise the activities. You could do as much or little as you are comfortable with doing, even if it's just coming in on a one-off basis to teach the children a specialist skill.
This remains an important group in the church community. Very few of these children have a church background or are linked to Bridge Street in any other way, so this group is a unique opportunity to make contact into their lives and to teach them something about who we are, and indirectly, what we believe.
Vicky Hemptead.