With lockdown having eased, Blackpool-based charity – The Boathouse Youth – is proud to say that it distributed over 2,040 food parcels and 6,800 activity packs to its member children over the last five months.
Under more normal circumstances, The Boathouse Youth (BHY) focuses on supporting young people in Blackpool by promoting three core elements – positive activities, nutritious food and healthy relationships – via its youth clubs in Broomfield and Grange Park (two extremely disadvantaged areas within Blackpool). However, during lockdown, it changed its focus to make sure it was still able to help and engage with its young members whilst adhering to all Government and Public Health England Guidelines.
New activities included:
- Turning BHY Bloomfield Youth Centre into an activity pack distribution centre where almost 400 envelopes, bags and boxes are filled each week with at least 20 different activities to help keep young people occupied at home. This included the activities themselves as well as the stationary required to complete the tasks.
- Making BHY Grange Park Youth Centre into a food distribution hub where more than 120 food parcels are processed each week by the team of employees and volunteers. These food parcels were then delivered directly to member families’ homes by The Boathouse Youth employees and volunteers.
- Engaging with its members via a series of Zoom sessions which included online craft activities, quizzes, and its most popular “Cooking with Kay” sessions. To achieve this a Mini TV Studio was set up in the kitchen at their Grange Park Youth Centre and involved investment into live streaming software, cameras and studio lighting.
Following the easing of lockdown, the Youth Centres are now open again and more normal activities have resumed. During the six week school holidays, the Boathouse Youth team have expanded their activities to include cycling, canoeing and ghyll scrambling enabling them to engage with the young people and keep them occupied with positive activities whilst school remain closed until September.
Laurance Hancock, CEO at The Boathouse Youth, said: “As soon as lockdown was announced my team and I started to plan how we could still work with our young members as we felt they would need us more than ever. We completely restructured the charity to provide regular doorstep deliveries of activities and food to over 400 children and their families as well as created a series of interactive online sessions.
“We could not have achieved this without the valued support of our regular volunteers, patrons like Key Group and our group of sponsors. A big thank you also goes to the team at Blackpool Tower who allowed us to use their commercial refrigeration and freezer units for our food parcels as well as their donations of food and drinks.”
Simon Thompson, CEO at Key Group, one of The Boathouse Youth’s platinum patrons, said: “We are delighted to play a part in supporting this amazing organisation which rather than shutting up shop in the face of a pandemic, thought on their feet and continued to make a real difference to the lives of children in Blackpool. Helping children and their families to engage in positive activities, enjoy healthy foods and build strong relationships is vital and the long term impact cannot be underestimated. Laurance, his Boathouse team and the volunteers who have given up their time have done a superb job during the pandemic in supporting the more than 450 children who regularly use the Boathouse services and we are delighted to help them.”
