Welcome to The Hunslet Club April Newsletter 2023! This little newsletter is our way of spreading recent news and mentioning exciting new developments for May 2023. Here you can catch up on everything we did and achieved in April 2023. Our newsletter comes out at the start of each month, and you can read our previous newsletter here.
The Hunslet Club was alive this Easter Half-Term! We had over 530 visits to our Easter Half-Term Activity Camp this year!
During the school holidays, not every young person has access to engaging activities, food or a safe space to make friends; that is why our activity camps are so important.
Thanks to the generous donations of milk and toast from Fresh Pastures, our young people had something to eat in the morning before they engaged in different activities. Fareshare also donated boxes of food during the second week of our activity camp to ensure everyone had access to food, regardless of financial background.
Leeds Community Foundation runs Healthy Holidays to help tackle food insecurity, isolation and inactivity. They helped fund our Easter Activity Camp to ensure young people have a memorable Easter.
Without our activity camps, many young people would not have a safe space to retreat to during the half-term holidays. Our activity camps genuinely keep young people off of the streets, as it provides them with a safe and welcoming space to spend their school holiday.
We are running another activity camp at the end of May to ensure young people in South Leeds and the surrounding areas have a safe space to come.
Our events coordinator organised a trail with clues dotted around The Hunslet Club at our annual Easter Party. But you can’t have an Easter trail without Easter eggs, which is why we are thankful to Kelly, The Morrisons Hunslet Community Champion, and Greencore, who donated Easter Eggs to our annual Easter Party. Over 100 Easter eggs were handed out during our Easter Party for free.
We always appreciate it when the community comes together to ensure young people have a memorable time.
We are currently searching for fabric as the young people who attend our youth clubs have expressed interest in having a textile session. If you have any fabric you can donate, please get in touch with abarwell@hunsletclub.org.uk or drop them off at The Hunslet Club reception. Thank you.
During the Easter Half-Term, we have our annual Easter Party. Our annual Easter party featured an arts and crafts section, a bonnet parade, music, a raffle, candy floss, the Easter bunny, refreshments and, of course, our Easter Egg hunt!
Seeing everyone’s faces light up when the Easter Bunny hopped into the party was incredible. Bringing the community together is always something we strive for at The Hunslet Club, and we are glad we could do that with our Easter Party.
We had over 80 visits to our Football Activity Camp! Our Football Activity Camp is a great way for young people to learn new skills, make friends, and improve their confidence, coordination and teamwork while having fun.
We had over 65 visits to our Rugby Activity Camp! Our Rugby Activity Camp sessions are tailored to the young people participating to ensure that everyone improves their skills and does not feel intimidated. We loved seeing their confidence grow with each session, even for the ones who may have only attended one session.
We are running another Rugby Activity Camp in May, and we want to encourage everyone to join, regardless of skill level.
In April, we kicked off our free girls-only football sessions to inspire more girls in Leeds to get involved in this sport. We strongly believe that girls belong in football, and we wanted to create a safe space where they could try this sport. Our first free sessions took place in April, and the incredible turnout blew us away.
We had an incredible turnout for the Majorettes Annual Home Competition. Events like this bring people in the community together to see the talent, dedication and hard work that the Majorettes have and allow the community to have fun.
We are in the customer vote for a Tesco Community Grant! This scheme gives community projects, like ours, grants of up to £1,500! In our case, it would go towards The Hunslet Youth Club Cooking Hub, which will enable young people of South Leeds and surrounding areas to learn how to plan and cook a healthy menu to encourage a healthy lifestyle.
Tesco customers can now vote in participating Tesco stores to decide how much funding we get, so please support us next time you shop at Tesco – with the blue coin.
In April, Leeds Law School Clinic came into The Hunslet Club and did a drop-in session where they offered people free family law advice.
They covered different areas, including:
We are thrilled that this drop-in session took place, as knowing where to turn when looking for legal advice can be challenging. This drop-in session gave people a starting point and effective, initial legal advice to help them move forward.
Our youth club made us proud in April, as they spent part of their time during a Sunday youth club to help litter pick in the local community.
A little bit of kindness goes a long way, and we are incredibly proud of these young people for sacrificing their time to help.
We had our second youth ambassador meeting in April 2023. Our young people were introduced to Dennis Robbins, The CEO of The Hunslet Club and Jennie Baldwin-Baker, our Operations and Finance Manager. We wanted this meeting to encourage our young people to go to any staff member if they have ideas for any area of The Hunslet Club.
We have always created an environment built around the wants and needs of our young people, and this further encourages the involvement of young people.
Our incredible team of youth workers have introduced a weekly Wednesday quiz night to keep things fun and active in our senior youth club. Participants also received a free hot snack for taking part: chicken wings; however, that will change each week.
We also held a karaoke night on the 30th of April, 2023, for both our senior and junior youth clubs.
In March, our youth club organised a social action project for residents from the local care home again, which involved connecting through arts and crafts. In April, our youth club did it again with their third-ever social action project; this time, the theme was games.
We can’t begin to describe how heart-warming it is to see different generations coming together, chatting, playing games and learning from one another. Everyone who participates in this event, from our young people to our staff, benefits immensely from this social action project.
We are incredibly proud of the young people involved in our Monday Evening Project. Each has worked hard since September 2022 to ensure they receive their level 1 qualification in their chosen area – mechanics, catering or hair and beauty.
Every young person deserves recognition when they accomplish something they haven’t done before. The Hunslet Club U9s dual football team have had a fantastic season that ended with a bang as they won the Champions League Cup for the first time!
We are incredibly proud of this achievement, as the team have worked hard in every session and shown dedication, sportsmanship, teamwork, and talent throughout the season.
As mentioned in The Hunslet Club April Newsletter 2023, we have had some fantastic guest speakers. Our guest speakers come into our youth clubs to give presentations and practical sessions to our young people. Don’t hesitate to contact our team today if you or your business would like to come in and talk to our young people about something that can benefit them.
