Rant Box

Life Skills for Children : NEW HOME, MORE SERVICES & OVER 10,000 YOUNG PEOPL...

Life Skills for Children :
NEW HOME, MORE SERVICES & OVER 10,000 YOUNG PEOPL...: NEW HOME, MORE SERVICES & OVER 10,000 YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE BENEFITTED Young People are our Future (YPAOF) is a registered charity...

NEW HOME, MORE SERVICES & OVER 10,000 YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE BENEFITTED

Young People are our Future (YPAOF) is a registered charity and was set in at the end of 2012.  At the heart of the charity lies the “Life Skills for Children” course which empowers young people with a set of core skills to increase their personal safety, confidence, communication skills and ultimately assists them in assessing and avoiding becoming a victim to BULLYING.

Due to the success of the charity in its first year of operation YPAOF has just moved into a BIGGER and better location situated at the CMK Railway station.

 “This new facility will enable us to run even more events and provide young people and their families with a professional service” said the charities founder, Gary Payne.

Some of these new services include activities in self-defence, fitness, yoga, drama.

To keep the celebrations going, YPAOF have just reached their first milestone with 10,783 young people having experienced the Life Skills education.

Gary said “Despite some serious challenges and a budget of a shoe string we have hit a major milestone so thank you to every one of the small but dedicated team who have helped”.

With the Life Skills for Children parenting book being published on Amazon and the funds supporting local young people through the project, it is hoped that the next target of 15,000 will be achieved towards the tail end of this year.

Details of the YPAOF charity and how you can access FREE events for your children visit. www.ypaof.org

   Thanks for helping us get past 9,000 young people

Well, it has taken some time but todays event at the Egham Sports & Social club has finally enabled us to breach the 9,000 marker. 

I turned up expecting to teach a group of 50 young people alongside one of our life skills coaches John, when I was pleasantly surprised to see the hall that John had hired was full to the rim.

John had been busy roping in members of the local sports community and managed to get 263 kids together at one event. 

To say it was loud was an understatement, but it was great fun and ended in a series of sporting activities that John had arranged with each sports club prior the event.

It was wonderful to see young people all of ages and physical abilities learning and playing together.

John is an inspiring life skills coach who in just one event has demonstrated his passion for making a difference in his community. 

By dedicating just a few hours of his time he has made a huge difference to hundreds of young people and their families. 

By day he works as a call centre manager and twice a week runs a local youth rugby team and yet he still finds time to give back.

The YPAOF charity was set up to make a lasting difference and people like John make it a lot easier to achieve our goals. THANK YOU JOHN.

www.youngpeopleareourfuture.org

BOBBY IS A HERO

When I woke up this morning, I never thought I would be inspired so much by just one individual.

Several days ago I was roped into running a Life Skills event for some young people attached to a group of military personnel. We have all been there before when you start to regret something you previous agreed to and this was my moment.

I don’t know if it was the thought of travelling in the rain or just complete laziness but I was really not too enthusiastic about running today’s event.

When I arrived at the venue there were many more kids than I was previous told about and this kick started my enthusiasm as it is difficult to run a session on positive mental attitude if your body language is nothing but negative.

I started the session and my attention was soon drawn towards an old friend who had beside him a man with a noticeable injury.

After initially touching base with my old buddy, he introduced me to Robert (Bobby). Bobby was caught in an IED attack in the early days of Afghanistan and sustained some serious injuries including the loss of his left leg, the loss of the bottom part of his left arm and some serious damage to the left side of his head and face.

I have a few friends who unfortunately have sustained injuries over the years, but Bobby looked like he had been through a truly horrendous time.

At the end of my event, when the children had been shuffled off to play elsewhere, my mate who invited me to attend whispered in my ear. “This is why I invited you today – enjoy”

To my surprise Bobby was invited to the event to speak to the audience of largely ex-military personnel. He stood up and proceeding to explain to everyone present how he got injured and why he felt the need to attempt to take his own life on 5 separate occasions with success.

The speech was touching and yet he added a huge amount of humour to it to soften the sound of his voice as it entered into the ears of the audience.

He explained that through the nightmare he was living every attempt to end his life failed because he believed he wasn’t his time. “Despite some detailed planning things would go wrong” he said.

Several months ago he was looking in the mirror and comparing his old body to his new, when he realised that against his wishes he was here to stay. He made an assertive decision to stop wasting time being negative and start seeing the positive in what had happened to him.

He gave us some funny examples of positive including being able to get to the bar quickly for a drink as those around him would feel sorry for him, and how when watching his local football team the club treated him like a VIP.

Bobby then started to weep as he told us of his regret at putting his girlfriend through so much pain. He added at the end that she was the reason for him changing his attitude and working with young people.

My ears pricked up as he continued by telling us how he has spent the last few months working with young people who are experiencing a difficult time. He said he runs a POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE course for young people based on his experiences.

Every so often we all meet an individual that makes a profound impact on us. Bobby is a real hero who has now dedicated his time to making those around him realise we can all overcome the biggest hurdles if we have the right mind set.

Thanks Bobby.

Life Skills for Children : Following my parents exampleWhen working with you...

Life Skills for Children :
Following my parents exampleWhen working with you...: Following my parents example When working with young adults who are unemployed and experiencing various personal difficulties it is oft...

Following my parents example

When working with young adults who are unemployed and experiencing various personal difficulties it is often the case that their story will replicate one or both of their parents when they were at the same age.

It is especially good to see a young person who has every right to follow a negative and very lonely path because of what they have seen and yet find the courage and strength to break free and develop an exciting path for themselves.

On one of our prepare for employment seminars I ran to a group of eighteen young adults, I was introduced to two brothers who both experienced the same childhood, both were inspired by the same pattern of parents who were content with living of the state and who both struggled to identify what they wanted to achieve in life as adults.

The difference between the brothers was clear from the outset as the younger brother displayed through his body language and enthusiasm an ability to want to break free whilst his older brother was clearly settling for a similar life to that of his parents.

Within the seminar we teach attendees to explore their imagination and develop a life plan full of wonderful achievements. We get them to remove the hurdle of money and explore the opportunity for them to travel and live a life full of luxury.

Once this is completed we get the attendees to roughly calculate the cost attached to such a lifestyle so they can then set realistic employment goals in an attempt to achieve this lifestyle.

The brothers like the rest of the group started this exercise very slowly, struggling to explore their imagination to identify what they want, but as the seminar progressed the younger brother kick started his brain and the ideas were falling out one by one.

As often happens in the part of the seminar, some of the group start questioning why they have been asked to dream when the reality is most of what they want will never be achieved. 

Just at the point when I was about to roll out my pre-framed answer, the younger brother interjected and said. "This makes sense, because if we now what we want, we have somewhere to start in order to get it"

The seminar progressed to it's conclusion with an exercise in which the group are asked to develop a work plan detailing the steps they need to take in order to find employment and start the process of earning an income to satisfy their dream of achieving their life's goals.

I remember saying to the brothers that the next few months would define whether they took anything positive from the seminar.

On Monday of this week I attended a youth employment group to mentor a few young people when I bumped into the older of the two brothers. Unfortunately he was still unemployed and was displaying the same lack of enthusiasm he displayed at our first meeting.

I asked him about his brother and he informed me that he had not only got an apprenticeship working for a popular airline but he had managed to get his father a job at the same location.

He continued by saying his brother was in the process of moving into his own flat and was learning to drive.

Impressed by what I had heard, I decided to look up the details of his life plan from the seminar he attended and the whole of his plan was dedicated to travelling.

He had planned to do the following 5 things 

1: Find an apprenticeship where he can travel 

2: Learn to drive so he can travel

3: Move into his own flat

4: Travel to Spain, USA, Africa

5: Spend the summer working in a hot country

I rang him up to congratulate him on his recent success and he informed me that apart of his apprenticeship involved working in Spain for the summer of 2014.

In little over four months, he had managed to initiate all of the five things he had listed down on his life plan. I asked him about his father and unfortunately he felt the need to give up his job.

The brothers are a clear indication that inspiring young people with the ability to create a realistic dream is and will always be the way to achieving great things.

They also teach us that no two people are the same and despite having the same experiences as children, having the ability to plan can and is often the difference between those who want to be successful and those who don't.

A Great Success Story

Young People are our Future helped me find my way

In July 2012 a 14 year old girl called Rebecca reluctantly attended one of the Life Skills for Children sessions held in Milton Keynes. Together with 17 other young people she participated nervously throughout the seminar and then disappeared very quickly at the end of the activity.

Three weeks later I met Rebecca again whilst delivering a PSHE session within her school. She was very keen to demonstrate to those around her that she knew the content of the course, so it seemed natural to let her assist me in running the event.

At the end of the session her teacher spoke to me and explained how challenging she has become at school. Attendance was poor and her behaviour was terrible. As a result she was behind on a majority of her school work.

I decided to ask Rebecca directly why she had such a difficult time at school, and the conversation revealed that her poor behaviour wasn't just restricted to school, but her parents were having a challenging time with her as well.

I invited her to attend a couple of events where I would have the opportunity to meet her parents and she obliged by turning up. It was very clear that unlike many young people I meet who have or are experiencing difficult times at home or school which has led them to behave badly, Rebecca has what could be described as a wonderful environment in what to grow up in.
Her parents were clearly devoted to her as were her younger siblings.

I decided to engage in a one to one session with Rebecca to attempt to find the problem. From the very beginning of the session, Rebecca kept highlighting how she has been given everything and desires nothing. Ipad, Iphone, TV, Laptop, you name it, she seems to have it. I asked how much she uses all of this technology and within a few minutes the problem was solved. Rebecca was like every other child who wants and wants and when they get, very quickly gets bored of it.

The girl who had been given everything was bored and not challenging herself to learn or have fun. Her brain was driven by the need to be entertained and when the IPAD stopped entertaining her she simply left it alone.

The more technology she had the more she relied on the initial buzz of entertainment but when it ran out she had to look else where for it. Mucking around and entertaining herself was the solution and in her own words she said "my friends laughed so I do it more".

This observation was relayed to her parents who initially dismissed my thoughts as stupid. I gave Rebecca a simple written task to create a diary of her life over a one week period. I asked her to write everything down from events that happened to her thoughts on subjects.

Rebecca did a great job and when I next visited the school I could not believe what I was told by the same teacher who had previously painted a gloomy picture of Rebecca. She said that her behaviour and attitude towards school and her work had improved massively.

So pleased with the result, I asked Rebecca to dedicate her time to creating a short story. It could be driven by any subject and she could explore her brain and see what happens.

Today I visited Rebecca in her school to run a PSHE session. I was pulled up by the teacher who said,
"In just a few months, Rebecca has gone from being behind in all subjects to being back on track with her school work, Her attitude towards school and teachers is completely different and I have just entered a short story she has written into a local competition because it is so good"

We often look so hard to find the reasons why young people do the things they do, but in this case it was staring both her parents and me in the face.

Well done Rebecca, I and we are proud of you.


The Life Skills for Children book has now been released and can be purchased at amazon. Click here for more information

I am often asked why our charity exists and why there seems to be so much interest in our behaviour modification mentoring course.  

Read on to find out why...

Figures show that Milton Keynes is in the top 10 places in the UK for
classroom violence. 

The statistics show that on average, there are 55 assaults in school per day across the country. In 2012/13 there were 10,750. 

Milton Keynes saw 779 incidents over a the two year period in classrooms across the city, the fifth most in the country.

The figures were obtained from 70 local authorities in England and Wales by the Sun on Sunday via a Freedom of Information Act.

Life Skills for Children : New - The ultimate anti-bullying and personal deve...

Life Skills for Children : New - The ultimate anti-bullying and personal deve...: New - The ultimate anti-bullying course for young people is available to BUY NOW! This book was written to support parents and teacher...

New - The ultimate anti-bullying and personal development course for young people is available to BUY NOW!

New - The ultimate anti-bullying course for
young people is available to BUY NOW!

This book was written to support parents and teachers in their quest to raise safe, confident, happy young people. 

Gary Payne is a veteran of the personal safety and development sector, and has dedicated over 25 years to developing and deploying training solutions for numerous organisations and individuals, including Police and Military personnel. 

The Life Skills for Children course is easy to learn and provides some very powerful messages, designed to increase a young persons confidence, personal safety, communication skills and ability to socially interact positively with their peers. 

The content of the course can be delivered to young people from 5 to 16 years and is a great way for families to learn some key skills together. 

The Life Skills for Children course has been successfully delivered to thousands of young people with some amazing results. The statistics below, taken from the first 7,000 young people who experienced the course, clearly demonstrate the                                                  fantastic results that are achievable with this course.

- 5,623 kids stated they feel more confident (80%) 
- 6,786 kids felt safer (97%) 
- 6,034 kids had better communication skills (86%) 
- 5,728 kids had better problem solving skills (82%) 
- 6,278 kids could set & achieve goals (90%) 

The course is the heartbeat of the Young People are our Future charity, which delivers the course to young people through schools, special education facilities and behaviour management groups. 

As a preventative measures course, Life Skills for Children will help young people who: Are being bullied, Have poor communication skills, Lack confidence, Lack self-esteem, Have behaviour issues, Have no motivation or drive. 

This course is a great addition to any parent or teacher who wants to provide their children with some real life skills that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

What a great 1st YEAR Thank you to everyone involved with the charity It has been just over one year since the Young People are our Future charity was born and what a great year it has been. The Life Skills for Children course has been successfully delivered to 8,102 young people, over 100 families have participated in the family forum sessions, 19 mentoring courses have been completed and over 40 activity workshops have been run all over the city of Milton Keynes. Community Activities The charity has run a number of FREE events for young people including sport, dance, drama, first aid and self-defence. A massive thank you to the event tutors, your contribution has been fantastic. We are currently looking for event tutors to assist us in 2014. Click here to find out more information Schools We have managed to interact with a lot of young people within their schools. The Life Skills course has been delivered through the PSHE curriculum. We have developed a school partnership scheme, which has been joined by several local schools. Our school work has enabled us to interact with parents and provide some successful family forum sessions. Schools on board include: St Monica's, Stantonbury Campus, Jubilee Wood, Shenley Brook End, Hanslope Primary and Summerfield. Mentoring Courses Designed as a behaviour modification course, the mentoring course has been delivered to over 300 young people. The mentoring course has been delivered in primary and secondary schools,and Pupil Referral Units The Team A huge thank you to all of those team members who made this year a great success, especially Destine, Michelle, Tony, Kam, Chris, Andy, Peter, Hannah, Josh, Samuel, Lewis, Aliyah, Milan, Sam, Harry.

Click the logo and help us raise money to put the next 8,000 young people through the life skills course.

Why do we wait for the horse to bolt before we lock the gate

As I reflect on yet another successful delivery of the life skills course, I find myself once again asking the question, why do so many parents wait for something traumatic to happen before they are forced to educate their children in the skills required to keep them safe?

Nearly 40 minutes of today’s two hour session was dedicated to an 11 year old boy who has been the victim to a series of bullying incidents that could so easily have been prevented. His parents were outraged at the lack of support they received from their sons school prior the summer holidays and yet they were unintentionally adding fuel to the situation by creating additional trauma to the young boy.

Most of us are guilty of waiting for the final payment letter to drop through the letterbox before we react, or leave it to the final minute before making our way to a meeting that we really do not want to attend. There has to be a point where we say to ourselves, this is too important to just leave and hope it goes away.

Over a 25 year career I have witnessed thousands of examples of people who have just left it to late and have unfortunately paid the consequences.

Women I have worked with in refuges who for numerous reasons have found it difficult to leave their violent partners only to feel the full force of their anger.

Men who work in a dangerous industry and yet have a belief system that nothing BAD is every going to happen to them until their lives are put in danger.

Parents who think there children will stroll through life without ever facing hurdles such as bullying until the child breaks their silence through a social network site or conversation with a friend.

Despite the sometimes horrific stories we hear via the news or depicted in movies, we all to often programme ourselves to say it will never happen to us. When it does, we spend the next few weeks and months asking WHY?

In many ways the most difficult part of my job over the years has been to let people who have become victims to violence, know that the trauma they have experienced could have been reduced and in many cases completely avoided.

Of course this trauma often leads to a number of long term negative personality traits such as low confidence, self-esteem, poor communication skills and mindset, so waiting for something to happen before we react, can and often does devastate lives.

I have a number of friends within the personal safety industry across the world who regularly tell me stories of people that have attended their classes after a violent episode in the lives. Teaching these individuals some practical and simple safety skills becomes a much larger task when you are faced with a series of psychological hurdles.

For me, this demonstrates that this issues of waiting until the horse has bolted before locking the gate is not restricted to a demographic location, nor is it restricted to a specific culture, religion and skin colour.

Human beings everywhere have and continue to programme their brains to assume nothing will happen to either themselves or their children.

The cost of rehabilitating victims of violence in this country alone runs into billions of pounds, and it is only going to get worse as we spend more time indulging in technology that on one had reduces the opportunities for us to socially interact with others and on the other hand encourages us through games to kill each other and live out our violent fantasies in the comfort of our bedrooms.

Whilst in the process of networking locally, I was amazed at the number of support groups that had been set up in Milton Keynes to provide guidance to people after an incident had occurred.

Some of these groups provide a fantastic service, however it seems to me many of these groups are fueling this silly thought process of waiting to late by presenting an image to potential clients that they will be there to mop up the pieces when it goes wrong.

Every course I have written and deployed has been about preventative measures training. Educating people in the skills to assess and avoid a potentially dangerous situation before it happens makes so much sense. I realise that this is not always possible, but by providing people with a set of skills to prepare them to reduce the amount of physical damage they might endure will in turn reduce the amount of trauma they suffer.

The long term benefits of having a society driven by preventative measures initiatives instead of trauma mop us services, will save the tax payer millions of pounds and more importantly will result in a faster rehabilitation process for those still unfortunate enough to experience some level of confrontation.

The Young People are our Future charity provides young people and their families with a preventative measures life skills course.

Show your support for providing people with the right skills before it is too late by liking the charities face book page. 

https://www.facebook.com/YoungPeopleAreOurFuture

Check out the website: www.youngpeopleareourfuture.org 

Article written by Gary Payne

Training to beat Bullying: Personality over Qualifications

Training to beat Bullying: Personality over Qualifications: Just a couple of weeks after thousands of young people received their examination results, I am starting to meet and work with many peop...

Personality over Qualifications

Just a couple of weeks after thousands of young people received their examination results, I am starting to meet and work with many people who are not in a celebratory mood.

Young people who have left school with poor qualifications and have fallen into a depressing cycle of doom and gloom over their future.

The pressure that is placed upon young people from their parents, schools, potential employers and society can very often become too much.

We all appreciate the importance of having a good set of qualifications, but surely having a good set of personality based skills are just as essential for young people.

Many of us will know of individuals who have the right qualifications on paper to get their job, but unfortunately lack the personality and social interaction skills to be effective and positive members of the team.

The education system is designed to produce individuals with a set of qualifications that meet the requirements of potential employers, but many parents will argue that a good percentage of the material taught to their children is largely ineffective and not appropriate.

A driving force behind the Young People are our Future charity is the concept of educating them in the importance of personality over qualifications.

Young people are taught to appreciate how to develop their confidence and self-esteem by engaging in activities that encourage them to dream, set goals, believe in themselves, communicate positively with those around them, work in a team and problem solve.

I am constantly placed in front of young people who at their core are enthusiastic, passionate and driven but, year after year since they entered into the schooling system they have been taught to focus on the wrong skills, which has left them to display a hollow image of their real personality.

It is about time we woke up and realised that having a rich personality that approaches life positively with the ability to communicate well and navigate the problems that life inevitably throws at us all should be a part of the core curriculum at school.

There should be sessions where parents are taught the importance of NOT placing unnecessary pressure on their children when going through school and the importance of teaching them some core personality development skills.

Employers need to take stock and adjust their recruitment procedures to take into consideration the benefits of employing young people with the right personality rather than making decisions purely on grades.

There are so many positive examples of individuals over the years who have left school with little or no qualifications and yet through having the right skills within their personality have become very successful. We have to acknowledge that something has to change if we are to stop thousands of young people every year going through a period of doom and gloom trying to come to terms with their immediate future.

 

 

Training to beat Bullying: Why start a charity?

Training to beat Bullying: Why start a charity?: Life deals each and every one of us with a series of challenges though our lives that test our knowledge, determination, r...

Why start a charity?

Life deals each and every one of us with a series of challenges though our lives that test our knowledge, determination, resilience and problem solving skills, so when we decide to take on additional challenges like setting up a charity to help others you have to ask WHY?

Why put yourself through the endless and frustrating task of navigating through a mountain of red tape. 

Why spend hours, days and weeks trying to get people to attend presentations.

Why completely exhaust yourself trying to make a small difference in the lives of others.

The last few months have been full of WHY’s and I am so grateful we stuck with it. Having successfully navigated through the early stages of setting up the Young People are our Future charity, the project team and I are starting to see the benefits of providing the services within the project.

In just a couple of months over 800 young people have experienced the proven Life Skills for Children course through community events and mentoring courses run in local schools.

The pilot of this course saw an additional 5,000 young people experience the course with some amazing results.

So, what is it? Life Skills for Children is an early intervention course designed to provide young people from 5 years + with some practical and realistic tools to increase their personal safety, communication skills, confidence, self- esteem and ability to assess and avoid a bullying incident.

Between the pilot and the YPAOF charity young people in North London, Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes have benefitted from this simple to deliver course.

The pilot was so successful that interest from 19 countries was registered and the course is now being deployed through children’s centres in Vietnam, India, Iran, South Africa and Sweden.

The Young People are our Future project is built around the Life Skills course and is set up to educate, inspire and motivate young people to become the best they can be. 

The project team has been overwhelmed with support for the project with hundreds of parents supporting our ultimate goal of putting these simple life skills into the PSHE curriculum in schools. 

We all appreciate the importance of education and learning how to read and write, however having these skills but no social skills, confidence or good communication skills is like teaching somebody to drive and placing them in a car with no engine. – They will not go anywhere.

The secret to achieving anything is to have the right mind-set, to have the right skills to enhance that mind-set and the right support to continually develop that mind-set.

The Life Skills for Children course provides the foundation for this personal development journey.

A key objective of the charity is to provide a sustainable educational service to local young people and their families as this will increase the success of the life skills course and will enable the project to positively impact the lives of those around the young people themselves.

This is done in several ways including the development of the “Kids teach Kids” team, which is made up of young people who are trained to deliver the course material to other young people across the city. The charity is also providing parenting life skills sessions so that a set of consistent set of messages can be introduced to families.

Finally, we have established a train the trainer system, which is already producing local life skills coaches who have the skills to deploy the course to a wider target audience.

In just a few months the WHY’s are diminishing and an optimism about how many young people the charity can positively benefit is growing. As a community project it is largely reliant on the support of local groups to develop the right momentum. Local parish councils and clubs are working together within the project, clearly demonstrating that when local knowledge and expertise is shared everyone benefits.

Whilst moving in the right direction the charity has had to overcome and continues to embrace many hurdles. Schools that are so reluctant to get involved despite the charity offering them free staff training in the life skills course and free after school activities, clubs that are so unprofessional they fail to attend events to run a one hour workshop, parents who think the charity is a day care centre and try to use the events as a drop of centre and those whilst parents who clearly fall under the category “Bad Parent” and feel their children do not require any life skills despite a mountain of evidence demonstrating that their children require some form of intervention.

It seems whatever the cause, charities who have the singular mission to help others have to endure a constant struggle to overcome these kinds of hurdles, despite having a huge amount of support, ironically often from the same people who cause some of these hurdles.

Young People are our Future has created a solid foundation on which to grow and one thing is clear at this very early stage of the charities development, the Life Skills course has and continues to be very successful and the statistics supporting the course look impressive.

www.youngpeopleareourfuture.org 

Training to beat Bullying: Local charity to improve young peoples personal s...

Training to beat Bullying:
Local charity to improve young peoples personal s...: Local charity to improve young peoples personal safety and confidence is successfully launched in Milton Keynes A new charity has been ...

Local charity to improve young peoples personal safety and confidence is successfully launched in Milton Keynes

A new charity has been born in Milton Keynes with a simple objective to provide 25,000 young people with a proven FREE life skills course. After a year of planning, the Young People are our Future charity had a successful launch on Sunday 2nd December at Shenley Brook End school.

The YPAOF Team

Young People are our Future is modelled on the Governments Big Society concept and encourages all aspects of the community to work together to benefit local young people.

Project leader Gary Payne explains more: "It is clear that many young people are growing up without the core values that a majority of people take for granted such as knowing the difference between right and wrong and understanding the word respect. YPAOF allows young people to experience a journey, which will see them receive FREE training in a proven life skills development course. This course is designed to increase their personal safety, improve their ability to assess and void bullying incidents, provides them with more confidence, good communication skills and helps them to develop a positive belief system, enabling them to achieve great things. Once a child completes the course they are encouraged to participate in a variety of FREE workshops in sport, dance, music and the arts to enhance their new skills. This is a great way of improving their social interaction skills and provides local clubs and groups with a great opportunity to engage with young people that ordinarily would not have the scope to mix with. Finally, young people over 14 years of age will receive employability skills such as voice projection training, presentation skills, creating a pitch etc." 

The charity has received a lot of support from the local community with volunteers lining up to become one of the 120 life skills coaches being trained by the YPAOF team.

Local schools are starting to appreciate the value of the project, and with 60 schools being offered a FREE Life Skills train the trainer course for their teachers, reaching young people across the city will be more achievable.

Gary went on to explain that he and the YPAOF team feel that the business community have an important part to play in this forward thinking community project. "Businesses across the city have an opportunity to give back to the communities they serve by supporting the charity. Remember this project is FREE so what a great employee incentive as companies can help spread the word by offering access to the project to the families of their employees."

This message is certainly getting out there as Home Retail Group, John Lewis, Jurys Inn and Energie Gyms have already demonstrated their support for the charity.

The first YPAOF project day is being held on Sunday 16th December at the Oakgrove Leisure Centre between 12 - 4pm. Young people will receive the 2 hour life skills seminar followed by free workshops in football, dance and martial arts.

Further information on the project and how to register for FREE places onto the event at Oakgrove can be found at the charities web site. www.youngpeopleareourfuture.org

Training to beat Bullying: Companies start to back local children’s charity

Training to beat Bullying: Companies start to back local children’s charity: A local charity set up to improve the confidence, safety and opportunities for young people has been supported by two...