The Shankill Area project were working together with the boys and girls model schools, Streetbeat Youth project, Townsend outreach centre, Glencairn youth initiative and the Shankill women‘s centre. They took 43 young people from the greater Shankill area on residential to Castlewellan Castle, Co. Down. The three day youth conference gave the young people the chance to have their say in how they would like to see youth provision shaped in the future. The large number of young people came from various parts of the greater Shankill and most of which had never met before. So the group was split into teams and they had to work together on a number of challenges and team games to help form relationships with each other. The activities included finding their way through a maze, doing a night line both pictured below.
The young people were then asked to come up with a plan for prioritizing resources to meet the needs of the young people affected in the scenario working on a fictional budget of £50,000. The groups had to think of all costs including securing premises, salaries, insurance etc. On the final day of the conference the groups had to step into the Dragons Den and present their strategies to a panel who would decide whether they would fund them or not. It was evident that every group had put a lot of effort into their presentations with some excellent ideas coming through. Every Group completed the task and was awarded their budgets. Overall the conference was a huge success with the young people and leaders both really enjoying it.
