Supporting young people into education, employment and training!
Three young people from the traveller community settled in Rose Hill in the summer of 2017 with their family. They began engaging with Youth Ambition during the summer holidays and regularly attended the street sports and boxing sessions after the holidays had finished. Although there were some issues with attending the sessions that stemmed from their personal situation, they quickly became an asset to the groups, encouraging other young people and delivering warm – ups and putting others through their paces when leading on main boxing sessions.
At first they had no interest in education but through conversations they quickly discovered that past experiences that include exclusion, bullying, anti-social behaviour and mental health were barriers that they needed to overcome to achieve their full potential. When the young people were questioned about their previous experience they explained that ‘we used to be badly behaved, but not much now. In Ireland, we would fight, now I’ve learnt how to deal with my behaviour’.
Building up a resilience through their participation in a range of activities and working with key people in social care, mental health and EET encouraged them to think about their futures and they quickly began seeking help to get themselves into education. One of the young people emphasized that they wanted to join The Oxford Academy School as they knew people there from the community whilst the other two young people wanted to join college so they could do plumbing and motor mechanics.
All three are now happy with one doing a mechanics course with activate learning, another working on a 3 month programme at TRAX and the final young person has now started full time at the Oxford Academy School. All three young people stated that they understand that ‘education is important’ and that the project had given them ‘life goals’. More importantly however was the emphasis these young people gave about how they feel about themselves and that attending the sessions ‘helped me with my anxiety’.
When asked if there was one thing they could tell others about being a part of the project they said that ‘this is a place you can come and make new friends and build positive relationships’