City young people bounce back for community cohesion project

A Connexions Nottinghamshire funded sports project to bring together young people from four keys areas in Nottingham city culminated on Sunday at a basketball tournament at the Jesse Boot Wildcats Arena, Greenwood Road, Bakersfield, Notts.

Working in partnership with the city youth service, the Connexions managed project has provided young people from the 4 areas of Nottingham with a 10-week programme of basketball training, and a video/lyric writing programme.  The young people were also subject to mandatory life skills workshops.

Sunday’s final tournament started at 12:30pm with various matches leading to a play off at 4:00pm. Between 2 to 2:30 pm there was a break, at which time the music /video project demonstrated some of their work.  After the play off, the awards were presented to the young people by Chief Inspector David Gilbert from Nottinghamshire Police.

The project, which has been running one evening a week over the last 10 weeks, has provided an opportunity for young people to participate in a new sport and learn the skills of play, whilst being given knowledge regarding healthy living, citizenship, how to avoid discrimination etc in life-skill workshops.

The City Youth Service has been running the lifeskills workshops, whilst Progress Fitness, (a Mansfield Basketball organisation) has conducted the basketball sessions. The courses were run from four school sites: Hadden Park, Henry Mellish, Elliott Durham and Hayward.

The event on Sunday brought together the four teams to compete in a tournament. At this event, scouts from basketball teams and sport colleges were available to speak to the young people above progressing them into further basketball possibilities.

Tony Sisson, Connexions Crime Diversion Manager says: “This project has been a wonderful example of partnership working and demonstrated what can be achieved by bringing a range of services and organisations together actually can accomplish. The young people involved have gained new skills in basketball and in video/lyric writing techniques, whilst gaining knowledge to equip them to deal with issues that arise in their daily lives, through workshops designed to enhance awareness of their communities and the roles they play within them. We hope that through this program and through integrating young people from across the City, we have been able to remove some of the barriers which affect young people today”.

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