Investing in Winchester's Young People
Our work over the last two years has been dominated by the creation and opening of our new city-centre ’re:fresh’ youth venue at St John’s House although the superb work of our youth workers in schools, churches and the wider community continues.
A review of ’re:fresh’ has been completed and showed up some remarkable facts. The youth work sessions have exceeded all our expectations in terms of participation, with up to 1,000 visits from young people each month.
We collect information about young people visiting ’re:fresh’, including their postcode and whether they are at school, in college or NEET (not in education, employment or training). Despite Winchester being a seemingly prosperous area with a low level of NEETs it seems that most of them come into ’re:fresh’ (between 14% and 18% of all visits each month are from NEETs). If we break down the visits according to which areas the young people live we find that the highest percentage of visits are from the areas with the highest deprivation levels. 22.5% were from St John’s and All Saints Ward and 9% from St Luke’s Stanmore (despite being some distance from St John’s House).
The Board of Winchester YMCA took a bold step of faith in committing £350,000 towards the ’Mid Hampshire YMCA development fund’ some years back. It is this fund that has been drawn upon to fund the capital and revenue costs of the St John’s House project not covered by the appeal, but further revenue funding is now needed to sustain the youth work. See our Appeal page for more details.
Much more needs to be done but we have made a great start. In all of this activity we are mindful that we must remain faithful to our Christian mission and ethos. It is only by God’s grace that we have got this far in our ambitions in seeking to ’help young people to fulfil their God-given potential’.
Mike Simpson
CEO Winchester YMCA
December 2011
