YouthNet blog
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Thursday Sep 10, 2009
Supporting Young Achievers
As a supporting organisation of the Young Achievers Trust, YouthNet has made some notable commitments to this charity. CEO Fiona Dawe is an advisor to the board of Trustees and Chris Denholm and I are are trustees. It's been a challenging and exciting year for us so far and we can't wait to be able to show off this year's award winners.The good news is, you can still influence that decision by making a nomination by September 27th. For the full details go to youngachievers.co.uk and head to the nominate now page.
YouthNet has also housed a communications volunteer who has worked hard on getting the Young Achievers message out. As a journalism graduate, Hoda has had some great work experience placements at the BBC and New Woman Magazine, but her interests turned to the youth sector after working as a press and policy intern at the British Youth Council (BYC) - another charity that empowers young people through volunteering. We've really enjoyed having Hoda in the office and look forward to seeing how her role can develop beyong this nominations period.
So, back to the topic of nominations. If you're wondering how a young person can really benefit from winning one of these awards, here's a list of just some of the outstanding achievements Rikki Colgate (pictured) has made in the last year - a winner in 2008 for the sports category. Since winning last year Rikki has continued delivering free weekly sessions on the Townsend Estate for youths in his Community. He now delivers two sessions a week . Out of these sessions he has managed to enter the young people into local ASB diversionary football leagues held on Friday nights.
He has been invited to the Mayor's Office for a select gathering of local Community Champions , he's also made presentations to the Council Chamber on Bournemouthon Community Sport and its benefits.
He is now getting paid as a self employed Community coach thanks to support from local community grants and support from Anti Social Behaviour funding streams in the area. He's the lead coach for Nacro on the estate and has under his tutelage 3 younger volunteers aged 16-18 who have seen the positive benefits of Rikki's commitment to volunteering and are now involved themselves in giving back to their Community.
He is currently contemplating returning to Education to do a degree in a sports related discipline and is pondering travelling the world as a football coach - an idea that was alien to him before he won the award.
We're really proud of Rikki and look forward to more young people seeing their horizons expand through this awards scheme. Posted by Helen Williams ( 1:36 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
