Our work

The national citizens service programme was divided into three weeks of work. In the three weeks we began to look at how charities work and what goes into organising one and events to raise awareness. The weeks also included voulenteering work and gaining new skills and qualifications.

Week 1 - Eaton Vale

This first week was to get all the group to know each other and become friends to ensure we would all work as a team in the following weeks. The week had various fun activities to take part in from team building exercises such as blind trails to adrenaline pumping ones such as absailing and high ropes.

By the end of this first week everyone had already become close and were acting as if they had known each other for years.

Week 2 - Waterbeach Cadet Centre

Week 2 is where all the volunteering began. Firstly as a group we went round to different charities to see what was involved and what they did for the people in need. The week also including various volunteering work from working at rabit residence rescue centres to working in charity shops helping sort through what the public donate to them. We had many different people come to visit us such as Money Twist who gave us all an insight of how to deal with banking and money and how to be sensible with it. We also had people from Sports Makers who tought us about running our own sporting sessions this was one of the qualifications we gained. The next one we gained was First Aid, we were taught how to place people in the recovery position and how to give appropriate CPR.

By the end of the second week we had a good idea of different charities and how to help with them and also gave us some ideas on which charity we would like to raise awareness for for our social action project.

Week 3 - Cambridge Regional College

In our final week we were given a computer room and the freedom to arrange our own awareness schemes to help our charity of choice ready for the launch on the final Friday. During this week we elected a council who would answer any questions we had and who would check through our decisions. We all got into our own groups who wanted to raise awareness for the same charities. We called the charities to gather information and what they would like us to do to help them. As a team we decided the best thing to do would be to make a article/magazine and have them printed off and hand them around Cambridge City so other young people will know what we have done and hopefully encourage them to get involved with charity work.