4 Years with YMCA Bimingham

I realised recently that I celebrated my 4 year anniversary with YMCA Birmingham. I’ve put together a few of my favourite moments so far in my journey. Thanks to all that have supported YMCA Birmingham and me so far! 

1. United Nations Economic Social Forum – Representing World/YMCA England & Wales as a Youth Ambassador at a United Nations Social Economic youth forum in New York. The forum provided a platform for youth to engage in a dialogue with Member States and to discuss the policy frameworks and promote innovative, approaches and initiatives for advancing youth development.
2. Parliament Visit/General Election Hustings - Organising a visit for young people to visit Parliament to speak about issues affecting them, helping shape a youth manifesto for the local area and arranging Hustings events which all promoted further opportunity for young people to have a voice in political matters.
3. Take-away Chefs - The project – Take Away Chefs – was a resident led programme which produced a booklet with healthy and easy-to-follow recipes, alongside a competition for two local schools to provide the artwork for the booklet. The project was highly commended from both the Money for Life Challenge and local MP Jack Dromey.
4. London Marathon - I have also ran London Marathon twice for YMCA Birmingham& England, that’s a bloody hard run but what an unbelievable feeling that you have conquered 26.2 miles and raised vital funds for vulnerable young people!
5. Unify - I was fortunate enough to be selected to represent YMCA Birmingham at the first Youth Unify conference in Lublin, Poland, I took a young person and lead my own small group of young people from all around Europe and it my role to facilitate time to consider and reflect upon YMCA’s Christian mission.
6.  Youth Matters Award - I was lucky enough to be put forward by the management team at YMCA Birmingham for the YMCA Matters Award. It was just an honour to be nominated, let alone win it. From winning the award I was promoted to the role Training and Employability officer in our brilliant Training team within our Social Enterprise
7.  Y-Care International, JAI Olive Picking Programme - I attended & took two young people from YMCA Birmingham to a 10 day project supporting Palestinian families in the villages of Wad Foukin, Beit Sahour, Teqou', Walaja and Beit Jala within the Bethlehem area, and tour within the Jerusalem area. This year, the program came under conditions of escalating settler attacks and Israeli army measures, which caused an increase in riots and popular resistance movements by Palestinian youth in various cities and villages throughout Palestine.
8.  Change Agents – The YMCA Change Agent programme is a World YMCA global leadership development programme to empower young leaders as change makers in their own communities, I’ve so far been on training programmes in France and Portugal. As part of the programme we build a project in our local community to support young people and help facilitate YMCA’s World Conference in Thailand.
9. Opening of the Chris Bryant Centre - The training team was fortunate enough to meet Princess Anne at the opening of the Chris Bryant Centre in Erdington. Princess Anne participated in a employability workshop and was great fun!
10. Princess Fiona - Many of my colleagues and friends from the gym will remmeber when I dressed as Princess Fiona to do a zumba class to raise money for residents at the Orchard, thanks Eileen and Emma for the makeup and dress!