Woman in Harrogate sets up youth club on van
Inspire Youth in Harrogate has set up a mobile Youth Base
A woman in Harrogate has set up a youth club on a van.
Inspire Youth has set up a mobile Youth Base, as a creative approach to support young people’s needs.
Found of Inspire Youth, Jess Ward, says it’s a safe space young people can easily access to discuss anything such as health, wellbeing, lifestyle or career aspirations.
The mobile youth club is equipped with a smart TV, a PlayStation, sensory lighting to calm young people and kitchen facilities.
The van also has a full information board to prompt discussion and provide an “open door feeling” where young people are able to talk to youth workers about anything they feel is relevant such as ‘health’ and ‘relationships’.
The mobile youth club usually sets up in open green screen where they can utilize all the extra space for games, sports etc.
Sessions at the youth club usually have 30-40 young people.
When we asked why Inspire Youth set up the Youth Club on a van, Jess said: “We began to build relationships with young people out on the streets who are detached and quickly learned that It’s more valuable to be in young people’s space rather than them coming to a place we had hired.
“There was another challenge of having to continuously pack up and move our things whereas going mobile means we can have our resources with us all the time.
“Our resources and information are there and they are accessible. We rotate things from our storage of resources but the bulk of everything is on the van.”
The majority of the Youth Club work has been in the Harrogate outerskirts, but Inspire Youth is considering expanding to other areas including Pateley Bridge.
A couple of sessions have already been held in York.