Yoga with Michelle - New Weekly Class at The Youth Centre

Yoga with Michelle - Starts at the Youth Centre Soon
For further details and to reserve a place, please contact Michelle Wingrove on 07890 739589 or email: michellewingrove@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Tuesday 1 March 2011 1 - 2.30pm (£7 per class)
Venue: Kenilworth Youth and Community Centre
Please come along for a free taster session -Mixed ability class. Beginners Most Welcome. Yoga has many benefits including improving flexibility and joint mobilisation, increased strength, relaxation, reduce stress and improve self-esteem

Young People Speak out to Save Their Youth Club in Kenilworth

Young people from Kenilworth took to the streets today in Abbey End and Talisman Square (Saturday 22 January) driving the campaign to save their youth club and collect signatures for a petition to Save their Youth Club. SIGN NOW - The Petition will end in five days time when all signatures will be collected and then submitted it to Warwickshire County Council on Monday 31 January at 12 noon.

On four evenings a week, the young people of Kenilworth head to the Youth Club in Abbey End.  They come to be with their friends in a safe place and discuss important issues to them with adults who offer them respect.  They also come to be involved in activities that help them make the right choices as they journey through adolescence.  And this week they came to plan how they can further express their dismay at the County Council’s proposal to end all funding to Youth Work across the county!

Mirie-Marie (aged 15), said she attends the club regularly to be with her friends.  She has also come to the centre to complete important school work and without this valuable resource she will have fewer places to turn to for guidance and support.  She and her friends were in Kenilworth on Saturday 22 January collecting signatures for a petition opposing the proposed cuts and have made posters to raise awareness locally.

Harry (15) agrees, 'If the youth club closed people would end up hanging around the streets and might end up committing crimes.  It’s crazy and will cost the community far more than what it would to keep the youth club open.'  Harry talks from experience - when he got into trouble with the police it was to the youth club he turned to for help. 

SIGN OUR PETITION The County Council’s proposal to end funding youth services will mean than clubs like this will not run.  They will be no funding for the professional staff team who mean so much to the young people.  The respect shown to the youth workers is evident throughout each evening and all young people talk about them with enthusiasm. 

Chloe, (14) said, 'The youth workers have helped me to change bad habits and learn more respectable behaviour.'  Rhys (16) agrees, 'We trust the youth workers.  They are open-minded and don’t judge us.  They are very important people.  They help us to feel positive about ourselves - they just help us!'

It is interesting to note that so much of what the young people say about their experience relates to the coalition’s Government’s new agenda of the The Big Society.  Ashley(18), has been coming to the youth club as a voluntary sports leader.  This experience has given him the opportunity to give something back to the community and will undoubtedly help him in his application to university.  Here is a resource where young people can truly experience the benefits of community cohesion.  Stephen (19), tells us that the young people have written to local councillors and invited them to the youth club on Wednesday 26 January, 'If they come to the club and have a personal experience of what it means to us it will mean more to them than just hearing about it from other people.' Read more about the Kenilworth Youth Centre

Warwickshire Youth Centres are Mapped

We all know about the cuts facing the Warwickshire Youth Service. The Kenilworth Youth and Community Centre is no doubt a focus for this town, but the issue of cuts is facing all Youth Centres. I will add News about each one as it comes in. 

In the meantime, I would like to know of as many independent websites and groups as possible that raise the Google Presence of each centre. It is my belief that by having a very clear online message, it can lead to opportunities for each centre to survive. This is post is just one small step as a piece in that puzzle. 

View Warwickshire Youth Centres in a full screen map

Deep Financial Cuts become Reality in Warwickshire and Coventry

Today, was the day when 13,000 petition signatures, a five minute speech from Vicky Fowler (former Youth Service member) and a further twenty five minute full council debate were not enough to stop the deep financial cuts becoming reality.

BBC Midlands Today iPlayer (report by Holly Lewis), the Spending Cuts are 3.52mins to 7.42mins in the programme), Warwickshire County Council to cut £33m and 1,800 jobs (BBC News) and Coventry City councillors approve budget cuts of £39m (BBC News).

Up to 1,800 jobs are to be cut at Warwickshire County Council after budget proposals were approved.

At a full council meeting on Tuesday, the authority agreed to cut £33m from its services.

The cuts included £3.6m from the county's youth service, Connexions, which has put hundreds of jobs at risk.

About 100 people gathered outside Shire Hall in Warwick to protest against the cuts while 13,000 signed a petition objecting to the youth service cuts.

The Conservative-led council also agreed to cut £8m from adult social services spending.

The council's budget for 2009/10 was £784.4m. In November, the council predicted its expenditure for 2010/2011 would be £825.2m.

Cllr Alan Farnell, the leader of the council, said: "We all accept that the magnitude of the financial challenges requires large scale reform. And, as in recent years, Warwickshire is under-funded when compared to the average local authority.

'No other jobs'

"But regardless of recent movement in the funding landscape, our principles remain the same.

"We may not be able to do as much as we, or other parties, would like but we're doing as much as we can with the money we've got, and we must be realistic."

But protesters asked the council to consider other options to avoid the cuts to youth services.

Teresa Chakroft, a Warwickshire youth worker, said: "I can't lose my job, there's no other jobs.

"I'm a single parent of a one-year-old. If I lose this job what am I going to do?"

SOURCE: BBC News

The Teapot meets at The Youth Centre every Friday - Join Them for a Cuppa

For the last seventeen years, Mary Harrison and other members of The Teapot have been meeting every Friday at 10.30 am for one hour at Kenilworth Youth and Community Centre. Their aim is to provide a meeting place for the elder residents of Kenilworth to make some new friends and enjoy a cuppa. Once a month, members of The Teapot are taken my minibus to a mystery lunch in a Warwickshire pub. What is fascinating is the collection of fifteen notebooks that have catalogued each Friday meeting over the past seventeen years. There is a list of each member name, comments, details of tea, coffee, Bovril and maybe who won the weekly raffle.

But, founding member Mary is acutely aware about the Youth Service cuts and how badly funding is needed in this community to keep such a valuable group like The Teapot open and able to see it's 20th Anniversary in a few years time.

Mary said, 'We have always had a magnificently appointed staff since starting the group in 1994 in Bertie Road. I remember doing the washing up by hand and carrying cups and saucers while stepping over toddlers playing beneath. It is brilliant to see a community working together with such a wonderful team of helpers.' Mary is passionate about the Youth Centre that caters for every age, in her words, 'From two to a hundred.'

Mary Harrison and The Teapot need all the publicity they can get when such difficult financial times are facing us all. There are many other groups that use the Youth and Community Centre that have not been mentioned so in the past weeks. For example, some of this diverse range include: Whitemans Dance Group, St John Ambulance, Watermelon Dance Studio, Yoga and Pilates Classes, Over 50s Keep Fit, Karate and the React Kidz Academy.

There is also the opportunity to book a room at the KY&CC for children's parties, business meetings and just about anything you can think of. That's why the centre already has over 800 members.