Middlesbrough Careers Club @ Community Campus '87 Ltd

Middlesbrough Careers Club is a training and education initiative that works with 16-18 year olds who are currently not engaged in training or educational activity.

produced as part of project run by Cleveland Arts
with Middlesbrough Careers Club.

St Mary's Centre
82-90 Corporation Road
MIDDLESBROUGH
TS1 2RW

Contact: Melanie Boyce (worker)
telephone: 01642351866
e-mail: careersclub@btconnect. com

Community Campus '87 Ltd
76 Brunswick Street
STOCKTON-ON-TEES
TS18 1UU

Contact: Carl Ditchbum (manager)
Telephone: 01642 357364
e-mail: communitycampus'87@housing94. fsnet.co.uk

A Youth or Adult project 2002 - 2007.

Community Campus '87 Ltd

Community Campus provides a range of housing, training and development opportunities for young people across Teesside in the North East of England. It provides housing for 70+ young people with a team (6) of support workers working alongside young people to establish and maintain a tenancy through the provision of lifeskills, emotional support and signposting to other appropriate agencies. Young people are encouraged to contribute to all levels of the organisation through house meetings, tenants meetings, project discussions and represent the organisation to visitors and project sponsors. The structure allows young people to take part in certain decisions and at the moment the organisation has 4 young people involved in the committee of management who use their experience of poor housing, social isolation and disadvantage to aid the organisation in pursuit of its aims and objectives.

Community Campus now runs a variety of innovative projects all focused upon young person centred development enabling young people to achieve their potential. The projects provide formal and informal structures for participation and development, giving young people a valuable stepping stone in their lives. One of these projects is the Middlesbrough Careers Club.

Middlesbrough Careers Club

Middlesbrough Careers Club is a training and education initiative that works with 16-18 year olds who are currently not engaged in training or educational activity. The core aim of the project is to prepare such young people for the world of training and/ or work. This is achieved by running a rolling programme of events around building young peoples confidence and self esteem, working through taster sessions to create opportunities for the young people.

The core element of the programme is based around opportunity search, careers action planning, a network of taster events placements and relationship building with young people. The young people we work with have experienced homelessness, drug, alcohol problems, sexual and emotional abuse. Our strength is that we are able to discuss and start to address such issues by signposting to appropriate agencies thereby tackling the issues that impact upon a young person 'holding down' a job or a training, learning opportunity.

Activities

Home Grown Tales - Was a project run in conjunction with Cleveland Arts. It involved the planning and then the implementation of an orchard alongside a drama and creative writing element, where young people explored the environment that they had created through the production of post cards and sessions at the university virtual reality centre.

Healthy Eating - after securing a grant from the Health Action Zone the Careers Club split into three groups and each group cooked for each other. The group then visited several restaurants in the area. For many young people it was the first time they had tasted some exotic fruit and vegetables. The programme has developed and we are talking about the potential to run a lunch club based on the health eating information.