Welcome to the fourth edition of Young TimeBank’s Newsletter keeping you updated with all the highlights from our projects and Volunteer Facilitators.

Thank you to all our volunteers who have completed training, and to those of you already matched with projects.

London News

At Greycoats, students’ entries are flying in to the T-shirt design competition being run by Avnish and Oma’s group. The winning design on gun and knife crime will be chosen before the school closes for half-term this Friday.

Milica and Nisha are working with Shpresa’s Albanian refugee youth group to put the finishing touches to their event promoting Albanian culture, now scheduled for Sunday February 22.

Candice and Luna’s group at Charter School had a film workshop from Young TimeBank, and are now ready to collect vox pops from students and staff to urge their school management to take action on lunch queue bullying. 

Many thanks to the volunteers involved in our brand new projects at St. Augustine’s C.E. High School and SEN school College Park, more information on these in upcoming newsletters.

Manchester News

The group at All Saints Catholic College blew the crowd away when they put on a fashion show to raise awareness about disability which also involved children from the Our Kids Eyes Club, a community group that works with children with physical disabilities.  The night included cheerleading, catwalk appearances by the school staff as well as the young people involved, students singing and a lot of character.  A big well done to the facilitators Mahla and Vicky, our contact teacher Bernadette Kelly, and all the young people involved, for all their hard work.

Continuing projects include those at Meade Hill and Lostock College. Meanwhile, Tim and Jouquim’s Citizenship project at Cedar Mount culminates this fortnight with their students presenting on the work of charities they have chosen, in the hope of winning funding from the Youth Philanthropy Initiative organisation.

Good luck to them and to all your projects - we’ll be updating you on their progress in future newsletters.

Volunteer Voices

This month Nisha Summan shares her experience as a volunteer working with Albanian refugee group Shpresa to put on a cultural awareness event.

Do you find that being a facilitator complements what you are trying to achieve at university and fits in with your timetable?

It allows me to show others that I’ve volunteered, showing commitment. At university it's harder to try to fit it in, so it’s an achievement. I think it fits in as YTB try to suit your needs, so I felt comfortable.

You’ve been working with a group of young Albanian refugees who hope to promote their culture through the project, what have you learnt and found interesting about Albanian culture whilst working with them?

I have actually learned a lot. I’d never learnt about Albanian culture before, I learnt their struggles, their dances, how their family upbringing is and about their culture back in their home country. It shows diversity, which we need.
 
As a 19 year old young person yourself did you find it daunting facilitating a group of young people where some were only 3 years younger than you?

Yes, I’m still young and some of the kids are 16! But they still call you “miss”, I was scared at first but once I got to know them and the project started off it was great! But I kept the boundaries by creating a bond with them, they need to understand that you’re there to help and have fun!

Opportunities

FairTrade Fortnight runs from 23 February to the 8 March, and is the perfect time to get a whole school, college or local community aware of Fair Trade.  There’ll be a nationwide fortnight of events enabling people to campaign for fair and just trade whilst having fun and raising awareness too. There are a number of resources, guides and information about local Fair Trade events on www.fairtrade.org.uk and http://peopleandplanet.org/fairtradefortnight09. 

Please get in touch if you have any questions, queries or suggestions and in the meantime good luck with all you are doing over the next month.

And finally this month, we said goodbye to our Young TimeBank Assistant, Jack Rowley, who moved on after eight months at TimeBank, to work as a Campaigns Officer with Help the Aged. We wish him all the best and thank him for all his hard work with us.

Best wishes,

The Young TimeBank team

E-mail: helpdesk@timebank.org.uk