Borrowby Kidz is a lively, traditional youth club run by Sally, every month. It’s a great opportunity for the young people to get together with their friends and chill at the end of the week. The age range goes from top end primary school (about 9/10 years old) up to 13/14 years old so it’s a really good example of the young people supporting each other over the transition from primary to secondary school. They do loads of activities and community projects, and were geared up to do a food bank ‘give’ as part of Easter when COVID-19 made us all have to go into lockdown.
This didn’t stop Borrowby Kidz and straightaway Sally and I planned to run a virtual club. We got an online policy ready and adapted the normal youth club rules to suit the new online club. I got a quiz ready and Sally and I practiced a Zoom call! Sally got the information out to parents and we all met online less than a week after lockdown was declared! It went really well and the young people gave us 100% feedback, asking for more! It’s easy to think young people are tech savvy and know more than us adults but actually, meeting like this enabled some of the young people to gain the confidence to contact their friends virtually for the first time. Hopefully the club helped them regain a little bit of normality at a very unusual and potentially difficult time.
Panda Gledhill
Youth Development Worker for Hambleton