News
One of our Trainers Provides us With Their Experience Delivering the Youth Hub
Jules and Erica have been delivering our Youth Hub throughout June and July to support young people in North Ayrshire with employability training. They provided the group with the skills that they would need to secure a job. Jules has given her thoughts on what it was like to deliver the Youth Hub.
My good news story for this month is from carrying out the Youth Hub in Ardrossan. I was delivering the sessions with Erica, which was great, as we had not worked together before and I had also not delivered a full Youth Hub previously, so I was excited to get started.
It did start slow but steady, we had some familiar faces from Pipeline and a few new faces participating too. During the first few sessions, the group were very quiet and shy to share their thoughts and ideas, which was expected. We continued to carry out activities and group discussions to help get them out of their shells a little more and feel totally included in the sessions.
Turning Point.
The key turning point for me, was when we carried out the Lifeboat Challenge; a group activity that looks at people’s morality and their perspective on first impressions. I have carried out this activity many times and most people are quite reserved and can be a bit reluctant to share what they really feel. So, I was pleasantly surprised when the group were completely honest and open about their feelings. They were interacting as a group, discussing their opinions (of which some were quite blunt) and they all enjoyed the overall experience.
There were 2 clients in particular that continued to turn up to every session and were always on time and it was great to see them slowly build on their confidence and interpersonal skills. They would interact more and more during each group discussion and happily share their thoughts and experiences.
On the last day of the course, I could see a visible difference in the clients and that is why we do this job, even when numbers are always changing and things don’t quite go to plan, when you can see someone’s, confidence shining through and they are happy to chat to you without the barriers that were there 4- weeks previously, it feels good!
Development.
On a personal note, I also further developed my understanding of how people learn and how to interact with clients with different learning needs. And it was great to observe some of the other sessions that were carried out, such as from SDS and TACT.