Lyceum Fit and community engagement
Harrow Club’s Residential
Last week Lyceum Fit teamed up with the Harrow Club and the local council, in particular the GVEU (Gangs, Violence and Exploitation Unit). Both Sabina and George went down to Hooke, Dorset for two days to help out with the Harrow Club’s youth residential project.
The Harrow club is a fantastic charity that operates around South London. It runs a number of different Youth Clubs and projects around the area.
Lyceum Fit was lucky enough to get involved and help out with one of their community residential youth projects. For quite a few months Lyceum Fit has been communicating with the GVEU and the Harrow Club to try to help deliver a program for young vulnerable kids.
The idea is to use sports and fitness as a tool to draw the kids in. Then after, to have a workshop to discuss certain issues or topics in order to exercise the mind and to draw vulnerable kids away from gangs, violence and exploitation.
This very much fits in with our philosophy of “train the body, train the mind.” The idea of the trip was to listen to the demands and needs of the kids around the Sands End community in order to develop a program to address these needs.
Lyceum Fit helped with some of the activities and organised a listening event to focus on our main goal of the trip, which was to listen to the needs of the kids. At times it looked like George was having more fun than the kids, especially during the mud run. He also helped lead the night walk and nearly got us all lost! To begin with, the kids were reserved about the idea of taking part in the sporting activities, however as soon as they got moving we could see a shift in their enthusiasm, and the rapport started to build.
Going forward our biggest challenge will not be to deliver the program, but getting the buy-in from the kids, as well as influencing them on the benefits of how to lead a healthy, fit lifestyle. Next step for us is to consolidate our findings and come up with a plan on how we can best facilitate and attract the teenagers to active ways of spending their free time.
We also have support from Arc’teryx, a top outdoor clothing company to help us to engage with communities that may not have had the exposure to the benefits and rewards of the outdoors. We are very much looking forward to continuing working with the GVEU and the Harrow Club and hopefully, we can start making a bigger impact on our local community. Stand by for more community projects from Lyceum Fit.
