Our Summer Holiday Schemes are finished and we had a great time!

We also ran three FREE Family Fun Days across the Summer, which were so successful and enjoyed by the local communities. Each Family Fun Day had many activities for people to get involved with from sports, to inflatables, giant bubble workshops, food and drink catering vans and much more.

We worked over 5 estates (Moorland, Birchwood, Monks Road, Ermine & St Giles), and each week was incredible. We also did a lot of trips over summer, and took so many young people on trips they don’t usually get to go on, including: Mablethorpe Beach, Drayton Manor Theme Park, Jump Inc Trampoline Park and Playzone Soft Play Centre.

The families who came to these were so grateful and we often heard sentences like “I can’t believe you guys do this for free! That’s so good!… We wouldn’t get to do much in summer as a family at all if we didn’t come to this.”

Our mornings generally looked like the HAF (Holiday Activities & Food) Programme, where we would teach the children something about healthy food and get them to try some different fruit or vegetable which they probably hadn’t eaten before. The HAF programme is specifically for children who are on Free School Meals during term time, which meant this helped the families who were struggling with the cost of living crisis during the holidays, as well as encouraging the children to get involved in their local youth work activities.

The afternoons were then filled with activities which would vary from either a local trip, or an afternoon of workshops, multi-sports, games and crafts in the same location which we had previously led the morning HAF programme.

Each day was filled with excitement and joy as we all got to know each other better and the young people got to meet other young people.

One really positive testimonial story, was of a young girl who said “I really love Energize! Can you guys do this everyday because this would be so good for me and my friends to come to!” We love hearing stories and testimonials like this, as it fills our hearts with joy and spurs us onto keep going, as we look to the future.

Our plans have already started for next Summers Holiday Schemes, and we can’t wait!