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Cambridgeshire County Council - Getting a life

The social highlight of a young disabled person’s week might be a trip to the local supermarket with their parents, but Cambridgeshire charity Speaking Up aims to change that.

A pilot project in Huntingdon is helping eight disabled young people to draw up plans for the kind of social life they would like to have and the support they need to achieve it.

They are then paired with non-disabled young people who help them in using money, travel or just giving a bit of moral support to try something new.  The disabled young people get to try out a range of activities, such as taking dance lessons, going to a gym or just playing football in the park.

Coventry City Council - Nettica cybercafe

When Hamida Khalifa, a youth worker in Coventry, saw that antisocial behaviour in her area was increasing, she joined with the local police to tackle the issues.

Local young people told Hamida and the police that they had nothing of interest to do in the evenings, but would really like access to an internet café. There wasn’t one locally, so they decided to create their own.  Seven teenage volunteers came up with the Nettica idea and Youth Fund money paid to refurbish the cybercafé which opened in January 2007.  By the following month the surrounding area was already seeing real benefits, with levels of anti-social behaviour reducing.

Devon County Council - YO2 Youth Club

Y02 Youth Club in Tiverton helps young people who have special needs.

It’s now the only club in mid-Devon which provides such a service. It’s a lifeline to young people from rural areas, giving them the support they need, as well as a fun place to visit. Instead of being seen as ‘different’, they are identified by what they can do, not by what they can’t.

When their club faced closure, the members applied for Youth Opportunity funding.  The club can now stay open until at least 2008, and more than half its members are in training for the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award.

East Sussex County Council - XTRAX Young People’s Centre

By the age of 16, Jenny Cross was addicted to drugs and living rough on the streets of Hastings. One day she walked past a drop-in centre in the town and went in. Now she’s 18, off drugs, has her own flat and is helping the centre that helped her.

Xtrax is an independent charity based in an area with high levels of unemployment and crime.  It’s open to all young people between 16 and 25 years old: the homeless, teenage mums, drug addicts, alcoholics, youngsters with learning difficulties or disabilities and offers a real sense of family to young people who have no one to turn to.

Jenny volunteers at Xtrax and she applied for Youth Capital Funding.  It paid for building repairs and the creation of a sexual health room offering pregnancy tests and test for STIs.

Essex County Council - ALT-ED Sports Project

The Alternative Education Centre in Harlow helps 15 and 16 year olds who have difficulties in learning to prepare for life after school.

Next to the centre is a sports area, which had become run down and dangerous. Ten young people from the centre applied for money from the Youth Funds. When they won a Youth Capital Fund grant, they shared the responsibility for making the project happen. It's now something the whole community can use.

London Borough of Haringey - The MPower Garden Project

14 disabled young people from the MPower Youth Participation Group in Tottenham decided to start planning their own community projects, beginning with the centre’s outdated playground.

They visited different play facilities around London and got feedback from other disabled young people. They even used symbols and drawing sessions to get the opinions of those in the group who couldn’t talk.

They then paid for the building of a giant ‘Tango swing’, asked as many people as possible to use it and changed it based on their findings.  The group designed different attachments to fit people of very different needs,  and even made a ‘den’ at the top of the swing for young people with disabilities like autism.