The team had a chat with Sabrina Bezkorowajnyj to find out about two of the projects for young people in Peterborough that she is involved with.
Sabrina told us about The Pyramid Centre which runs a youth group and the Spinney Youth Club which runs music projects for young people. Both of these projects share key aims which are to provide a valuable service for young people in the area and are even helping to reduce anti-social behaviour.
Sabrina works for Peterborough City Council in the Youth in Localities Team and co-ordinates a wide range of projects. Read on to find out about a few of them.
The Pyramid Centre
The Pyramid Centre opened its doors in early 2013, so is still in its very early stages of development. Despite it being early days, Sabrina said that the impact of the work they are doing is already clear.
There is a weekly session at Pyramid run by Sabrina and a team of volunteers which provides training and work experience to local young people. Sabrina mentioned that the impact these sessions have is massive, particularly in improving participants’ confidence. This project is run by volunteers along with the Peterborough Youth Offending Service.
One thing they’re working on at the moment is a cookery project for young people. The structure is simple; young participants are provided with a range of ingredients and then the rest is up to them! The mission is to educate them about healthy eating and transferrable work skills as they create recipes that are healthy and on a budget.
Some of the recipes that they have devised have been so successful that they are looking in to publishing them as a cookbook. This is excellent CV experience for the participants and would bring in some additional funding for the group.
Helping out younger members of the group
They also run a peer leaders scheme. This means that once a member of the youth group turns 15, they can become a young leader. Sabrina told us how important these leaders are; both as an accolade to be proud of and acting as a positive role model to younger members of the group.
In fact, focusing on the younger members of the group is very important. Sabrina said that often their focus is on 11-15 year olds. She called it ‘early intervention’ and said that if you signpost young people to the right kinds of support while they are still young, it can prevent lots of future problems in all sorts of ways.
What other projects are there?
As well as her work with the Pyramid Centre, Sabrina also coordinates other projects too. This includes the Spinney Youth Club which runs at the Spinney – the home of Little Miracles, who we also met. You can find out more about them in this blog post.
This other youth club is much more music focused; the young people work alongside a local M.C. to create their own music with positive lyrics.
We were really impressed by the projects run by Sabrina and taken aback by all of the great work she is doing for young people in Peterborough. It was clear that by running projects that encouraged creativity and the building of valuable skills, it’s possible to work alongside young people and create a really positive atmosphere.
Thinking about starting a youth club of your own? Take a look at the Working with Young People category in our Knowledge Bank for some tips and inspiration.
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