A weekend dedicated to hope

A Day of Hope

On the 6th July Young Christian Workers are holding a celebration event for the 100th anniversary of the YCW. More information to follow.

Youth Leadership and Youth Voice Training

Youth Leadership and Youth Voice Training                                      Saturday 10th May 2025
By Ella Holliday

On Saturday, eight young people, from Fylde, came together for our youth leadership and youth voice training day. The young people, aged 12 to 15, had two workshops, each an hour long. The first workshop was led by Francis, a youth worker from Lancashire Boys and Girls Club who is promoting the ‘Youth Voice’ campaign. Francis spoke to the young people about his work in ‘Youth Parliament’ and offered them statistics based on young people’s platform in society. This raised a lot of interest and awareness from the young people about why their say and impact is so important in today’s society. For example, their vote in the general election and how decisions around young people’s involvement in politics is influenced. Francis also ran two activities, the first demonstrating what happens when we vote as a society of various influences and age groups. In the second activity, the young people were each given a sheet of paper with several of the same tables. Each table showed the sections of government, from welfare, to the NHS, defence and ‘other’, which referred to topics such as transport, and so on. The young people were then told they had £100 to divide between each category. They completed each table in a different way; first independently, then in pairs, and then in groups. Then, it was discussed as a whole. Francis then shared the real statistic behind this, which certainly shocked the young people in regard to how the nation’s money is spent. From this, we had a group discussion, of how we influence choices and why their voice is so important.

After some pizzas, the young people then had a workshop led by my dad, Barry, who has a lot of experience in building teams and skills in younger individuals, who are building their career and expertise. Firstly, Barry began by asking the young people about what sorts of attributes they thought were needed to build a team. After a short discussion, the young people then completed two team building exercises. For the first one, the young people were separated into two groups, and each were given uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows and were asked to compete against each other in a small timeframe to build the tallest tower. After a lot of bickering and frustration, Barry got the group back together, and asked them what worked and what didn’t. The young people then spoke about their lack of communication and some people expressed they struggled collaborating and felt they would have worked better independently too. After this, Barry asked the young people to form a human knot and to then untangle themselves. Again, with more thought around the efforts of team building skills, they re-grouped after almost managing to get everyone untangled. The young people had picked up on what their strengths and weaknesses are, and planned to use this knowledge moving forward. These skills can now be used towards our youth leadership and development groups and our upcoming projects and events, such as our residential trip to Castlerigg in October. Lottie and Simone, two of our young people, provided us with short clips, each offering their thoughts on the session.

IYF 2021

This year’s IYF festival will be held on discord and is open to all previous participants and any new ones. For more information contact Andy @ andrewhooper5@hotmail.com

Reaching Out: Wellbeing Conference 23rd February 2020

Young people from Preston Impact Groups came together with young people from across Lancashire and the Fylde for a wellbeing conference at the Xaverian center in Preston. The conference was youth led with the aim to promote an open discussion about mental health and wellbeing. We were pleased to be joined by a host of people including Marc Besford who is the national president of the YCW, our national chaplain Fr John Marsland, and Steve Walker, who is a Youth work and community development lecturer at the University of Cumbria.

More information on the day can be found on Steve Walker’s blog https://stevewalker.live/blog/

A big thank you to all the young people involved in the day and to Xaverian center for hosting us.

IMPACT Visit Sherwood Care Home

On Sunday 8th December, 2019, pupils from Our Lady’s Catholic High School and the Preston Impact Youth Group paid a visit to see the residents at Sherwood Court Care Home in Fulwood. Since we were on the countdown to Christmas, we began by singing some Christmas songs to the residents and they joined in if they wanted to. There was a bit of Mariah Carey, some Wham! and a few classic carols such as ‘Away in a Manger’.

After the Christmas festivities, we sang some Abba, Queen, The Greatest Showman and even ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen! The residents of the care home enjoyed a sing-along, with some hot drinks and a mince pie and we all enjoyed meeting, and talking to, those who were of a different generation to us. We hope to continue our inter-generational work further in the future and get to know people who we wouldn’t usually spend our time with.

On behalf of the Impact Youth Group, we would like to say thank you to all of the staff and residents at Sherwood Court Care Home for their lovely, warm, welcome and for allowing us to sing for them!

-Written by Hallie Brady

Annual BagPacking at Booths Fulwood

Delighted to announce that the Impact Youth Groups raised £571 on the 23rd December of last year. Many thanks to all donated and to the members of the youth groups who volunteered to take part.

BagPacking at Booths Fulwood

Thanks to everyone who took part in the bagpacking at Booths Fulwood on Friday 23rd December for Impact Youth Group's, we raised £783. Thanks to the staff at Booths also, for their support.