Councillor Hails The Success Of Local Youth Project (Leeds Liberal Democrats)

Leeds Liberal Democrats <info@leedslibdems.org.uk>

Councillor Hails The Success Of Local Youth Project

February 4, 2005 11:39 AM

Cllr Penny Ewens took the opportunity to highlight the success of pioneering youth project Connect at an open day held last week (Friday 28th January). Speaking at the grand finale event, Cllr Ewens praised the work done by the Connect project based at The Grove Resource Centre, Woodhouse for their hard work and involvement with children of all ages from the local area. Funded by Connexions West Yorkshire the project had been running for a year. The event was well attended by representatives from Youth Action Little London, Connexions, the Connect project and the young people themselves.

Councillor Penny Ewens (Lib Dem, Hyde Park & Woodhouse) said, "The Connect project has been a local asset, particularly for the young people in the area. The funding for voluntary organisations like Connect is often "dicey"

and it is important that we recognise that despite the hard work that goes into a new project they sometimes are forced to come to an abrupt end."

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Councillor Ewens Speech

As a new councillor in this ward I have been enormously impressed by the amount of good work done by a number of small groups and establishments which exist in Hyde Park & Woodhouse and which work for the benefit of, mainly, young people who live in the immediate area and who, for a welter of reasons, are in need of new and different support to help them along.

It has to be said that not everyone is best served by the conventional offers in education and training which are offered to everyone under the age of 16. The result is that they find themselves post-sixteen in a sort of no-man's land where, if they do decide they need help, they have no idea where to find it. They may find themselves, a few years on, more grown-up and needing to access the support which was so seemingly useless to them when they were younger. They may have found a way of life which they really want to change but they cannot do so without help. There may be people new to this country, seeking a better life, or, in many cases, a safer life, for which no formal provision of help is available.

These are the places where the Grove is so useful and so successful.

Everybody is good at something, but often they need help to find out what it is, where their horizons need broadening and their skills need developing and honing.

This is where the Grove comes in: communication skills (we sometimes forget that a computer is of little use if the user has problems with reading or writing); help with parenting where a mother finds herself in a new country, literally thousands of miles from her family and the help the family could offer; the opportunity to learn English for those who only have a different mother tongue and who had no choice but to get away from their home country.

The Grove is safely housed in this building, but has only been provided with one year's worth of running costs. Time to show whether such a venture could be successful, but no financial provision for that success to be carried forward. The Connect Project enabled it to be set up; it does not enable it to carry on.

In many cases in the ward, small local organisations run into the danger of being closed down; not because they don't do a good job, not because there are not people anxious to see them continue, not because the need for their services and provision has gone away, but because, through no fault of their own, funding has dried up.

I would appeal to anyone here who is in a position to do so to see what they can do to restore the Grove's future by ensuring the Grove's financial future.