Teens in Manchester give up their Saturday to volunteer for their local community as part of national NCS Action Day
Hulme Community Garden Centre volunteer day is just one of many social action projects taking place across the country

The day showcases the lasting impact young people are having on local communities through NCS

 

On March 5, teenagers from across Greater Manchester dedicated their Saturday to help tackle key issues in their local area as part of Action Day, a national event organised by the National Citizen Service (NCS), the UK’s flagship youth programme. 

The day saw over 60 teenagers devoting their time to help regenerate an inner city area through developing green public space, and encouraging healthy living through gardening and food growing. The day is designed to showcase young people’s enthusiasm for creating real positive change in society.

Manchester marked Action Day with a flagship event, which took place at Hulme Community Garden Centre. Here, young people came together to help create a sensory garden as well as new facilities, such as a wood-fired pizza oven, for one of the city’s successful community projects.

With guests from Manchester’s Real Junk Food Project and Manchester Youth Market also in attendance, the day of social action was led by representatives of NCS regional youth boards; groups of socially conscious 16-18 year olds who are passionate about helping the local community. The young people who gave their time to attend also had the opportunity to get involved in crafts, learning new sustainability skills such as woodwork and upcycling.

 Tayib Masood, 18, said:

“I’ve always been interested in giving back to the community but if it wasn’t for NCS I wouldn’t have got involved in a day like this. It’s been really fantastic to come to the garden centre and do hands on activities, that way you can really see what you’ve achieved by the end of the day.”

 NCS is a once–in-a-lifetime opportunity open to all 16 to 17 year olds across England. It is a unique two or three week full-time programme open to all Greater Manchester teenagers and is focused around fun and discovery, with participants volunteering at least 30 hours to a community project they create to address an issue important to them. To date up to 8 million additional hours have been dedicated to local communities as a result of NCS and young people raised approximately £1.3m for local causes in 2015 alone.

In Greater Manchester, NCS is provided by The Challenge Network. Karla Bleakley, Graduate Manager for The Challenge, said:

“We were so pleased to see so many NCS graduates coming back to help make Action Day a success in Manchester with many showcasing the skills they learnt on NCS. The amount of projects happening across the country helps us realise that young people today are genuinely engaged, and really do want to make a difference.

 Karla continued: “Creating a social action project is just one part of the NCS programme which takes place over two or three weeks and also includes outward bound activities and a week away at university-style accommodation learning important life skills. We hope the event will encourage more young people across Greater Manchester to take part in NCS this year.”

NCS’s independent evaluation has shown a significant increase in a young person’s interest in their local area since taking part in the programme. Three quarters (76%) of teenagers post-NCS agreed they were more likely to help out locally, and six in 10 reported feeling a greater responsibility to their local community. The summer programme also showed that NCS participants do 6 hours more volunteering a month than peers who haven’t been on the programme.

To find out more about the summer and autumn programmes for 2016 in Greater Manchester, visit www.ncsthechallenge.org. 

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