Hi everyone, it’s been a while! I hope you’re all settling well into a new term, a new academic year and a new season.

At Sidmouth Youth Centre, the new season has meant the return of an old service; we are thrilled to be running open access youth club sessions again. After the last couple of years of disruption Covid has caused to our service, I feel so grateful that we are able to offer this incredible support to our young people once more.

We have had a fantastic new intake of year six youth, all of them excited for it to finally be their turn to access the youth centre on a Friday evening! We’re settling them in, establishing ground rules and relationships, and having a lot of fun; last week, we held a food quiz… as you can imagine, it got pretty messy!

This new season has also meant a time of change within our staff team; one of our long-standing youth workers has moved onto another role in Young Devon. And with the sadness of seeing a much-treasured member of the team move on, also comes opportunity for new people, new relationships and new skills… Michael has joined the team as Lead Youth Worker. He is a trained teacher, an art and poetry enthusiast and has a real passion for creativity. He’s excited to be part of the team and has already started getting to know and build relationships with the groups.

Another piece of great news; Kizzie, who has volunteered at the youth centre for years (following on from attending as a young person) is now employed as a sessional worker. Kizzie has started her new role with Young Devon by leading the kitchen area, taking orders in the Youth Café and leading cookery activities; last week they made apple crumble, yum.

For the next few months, I am going to be spending a bit more of my time on another programme within Young Devon, so I am currently looking for someone to do some hours in the Sidmouth Youth Work Coordinator role. It’s a fantastic opportunity to make a real impact locally on the lives of young people, as well as support our wonderful team of staff… if you are passionate and experienced in supporting young people, I’d love to hear from you. You can check out the role at: https://www.youngdevon.org/work-for-us/youth-work-coordinator

I hope you consider joining the Young Devon Sidmouth team!

Until next time…