Community of Youth has been operating for three years out of Lords Taverners Woodside youth club. Over the past year, they held several community events including a pensioners tea party, Halloween celebrations, a Christmas festival, and Coystock music festival which over 500 people attended. Sessions are run 3 hours per week and cover topics like health, relationships, and life skills. The 25 member Coyaction volunteer team plans events, runs sessions, recruits for the National Citizen Service, and engages in political and democratic activities. The group aims to expand music opportunities and has seen some members perform locally. Community of Youth expresses gratitude to its funders and supporters for enabling its youth programs.

1. Supported by
Our social media as of April 2015 www.communityofyouth.co.uk
www.facebook.com/communityofyouth 838 Likes
www.twitter.com/coyhalton 538 Followers
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSfYZf8CFTG5kV9dVlkPOgA
Another year has passed and it has been three years now since Community of Youth first
opened its doors to young people at Lords Taverners Woodside youth club thanks to Youth
Fed and its ongoing amazing support. A lot has happened and we have seen some great
outcomes this year especially with the young volunteer Coyaction team that continue to go
from strength to strength. Our main thanks go to each and every volunteer who give up so
much time to ensure local young people have a place to go and things to do in their area.

2. Events
We saw a few events and activities over the past year such as the pensioners tea party, a two
evening Halloween celebration and Christmas festival nights for young people and the wider
community but our main one was our music based funday called Coystock. Many local bands
and musicians gave up their time to play throughout the day and we had many stalls and
things to enjoy for the whole family and it was a great success. The social action ethos
installed by NCS graduates within our young volunteers has enabled some fantastic
community celebrations to take place and they have been at the heart of everything we ran.
Over 500 people attended the Coystock event.
Halloween community event October 31st
2014

3. Sessions have ran throughout the year. Our sessions are for a full three hours and run 6-9pm
weekdays on Mondays and Wednesdays and 7-10pm on Friday and Saturday evenings.
Within these we have offered a broad range of fun activities as well as informal education
workshops covering so many subjects such as smoking, alcohol, drugs, sexual health,
relationships, life skills, citizenship and many many more.
Money for life workshop, teaching our members financial and money skills

4. Over the year members of the team have met every other Thursday were they have held
meetings, planned and also invited other organisations along to do presentations and question
and answer sessions. They have also done some training from customer service sales training
with academy one, presentation training, volunteer training, First Aid, conflict resolution and
much more. They all continue to volunteer at sessions from running the tuck shop, signing
members in at the door and generally supporting the sessions. They help clean and set up and
have worked hard running events that they have planned and put on with small funding pots.
Some helped at junior clubs and street based sessions as well as the CHAPS (Cheshire
Autism Practical Support) youth club that run every other Thursday. Many have also
recruited other young people for the National Citizen Service with Youth Feds Changing
Young lives and supported NCS taster events across Halton. Towards the approach of Mays
election the team had the chance to do a political Q&A with Weaver Vale Labour candidate
Julia Tickridge and members encouraged others to register to vote. Some members did decide
to help out the Weaver Vale Labour team and attended Labour events were they met Ed
Miliband and Eddie Izzard, although COY is politically neutral it is really positive to see the
team being active citizens and fully engaged in the democratic process and we are proud that
some also highlighted transport issues for residents of Windmill Hill. They have also made
short film clips promoting what goes on which are on our You tube channel COY Halton.

5. With Labours Julia Tickridge With Riverside housing
With the Mayor collecting well being award certificates from Halton borough council
Running a community stall one of the Coyaction meetings

6. Presentation training Christmas Dinner
Rt Hon Graham Evans MP visit
We have about 25 young Coyaction volunteers currently with more on the way!

7. We pride ourselves on giving young people access to music, be it through karaoke and
vocals, DJing, guitars or drums, with further funding we will invest in new instruments and
aim to have a piano and banjo to. What we have seen is peer led learning as our members
pick up instruments regardless of ability and are shown by others. Anyone can pick up a
guitar if they don’t have one and they can plug into an amp if they wish as our equipment is
always available to use for young people. Some have really excelled this year and have gone
on to gig as DJ’s or as musicians across the North West in various events which is amazing.
One also went to Liverpool live TV, the cities online web channel for music.
Jamie at LLTV 2Overload performing at COY
Electric session Jess Jones at Chester FC
Alesha performing at COY Tom and Joe learning

8. Thankyou to everyone who funds and supports us, we could not
do this without your generosity as a voluntary provision