More awards than anyone
MORE than 50 Wear Valley youngsters received awards this week making a West Durham youth group the best in the county.Based at the Glenholme youth centre in Crook, 52 members of the West Durham Youth and Community Resource received awards for young achievement, arts, key skills and Duke Of Edinburgh, confirming in chairman Ian Lyle’s eyes that there are a lot of positives in the youth of today.
Ian, who has been a volunteer for the group for the past seven years, said: “Young people get a lot of bad press, but the vast majority are good, honest people and they have proved that by gaining so many awards. It’s a shame that we only ever hear about the ones causing trouble, when 98 per cent of them are doing good in the community.
“The fact is that youngsters at our youth group, which covers Witton-le-Wear, Crook, Tow Law and Wolsingham, have achieved more awards this year then any other groups in the county, and considering we have much smaller facilities than a lot of other clubs it just shows what excellent work they have done. We want youngsters to be relaxed when they come here, and not to feel like they’re just going back to school.
“The awards have been geared around what they find interesting and what will engage them.” Project manager Cliff Britton is also delighted at the results, but insists it is testament to the young people as well as the group’s work.
Cliff said: “The group is based around young people having fun, and getting the awards is part of that. There has been a lot of gloom and doom spread about young people, but we are proving that so long as you engage with them and give them something interesting to do you can massively reduce the number of problems they cause.”
It hasn’t been plain sailing for the group though, and they have had to overcome tribal attitudes to get youngsters from across the region to work together.
Cliff said: “One problem we have encountered is youngsters don’t want to mix with people from other areas. When we first set-up we found members from the Watergate Estate didn’t want to engage with people from the other side of Crook, and breaking down those barriers has been an important task for us to complete.
“We still find that there isn’t much integration between the villages, but we are getting there and just showing them that they are all exactly the same with identical issues and problems and positive ideas is making a real difference.”
For more details on the activities run by the group, contact Cliff on 01388 762760.
