Fife Youth Work Week 2012 – Glenrothes Youth Forum

Stuart Cumming, Rathbone Glenrothes Get Ready for Work Trainee at Apprenticeships in Scotland writes about his part in Fife Youth Work Week.

Last week was a pretty busy week for us at the Glenrothes Youth Forum as it was the 2012 Fife Youth Work Week. The Glenrothes Youth Forum is a youth group with young people from across Glenrothes.  We normally meet twice a week to support community initiatives with and for young people. This was a big week for us with all the events that were going on as well as the forum preparing for our very own Glenrothes Yoscars - an awards event which would end the week for us on Friday.

The week kicked off with the Fife wide Yoscars which took place in Dunfermline and saw a number of young people and youth workers from across Fife come together and celebrate the achievements of young people across the Kingdom. The evening was hosted by Tree of Knowledge’s Gavin Oates (who was very funny may I add). The Awards and Winners can be found here. The Glenrothes Youth Forum were lucky enough to be nominated for the Democracy and Citizenship award and we didn’t leave empty handed as we got a certificate for being runners-up. This rewarded the success of my peers who had set up the Over to YOUth, participatory budgeting event planned by the youth forum for Glenrothes young people.

The next event we went to was on Tuesday. It was the Fife Youth Forum Meeting. The event took place at Kirkcaldy High School, where all the different youth groups from Fife came together to talk to our local councillors. The first part seen all the groups in the hall posing our prepared questions to a panel of 5 councillors from different parties and getting their views and advice. In the next part of the evening we broke off into our different youth groups to have a discussion with our own councillors. In our case it was Councillor Peter Grant. The evening was a great opportunity to raise our profile as a youth forum and hopefully be able to influence decisions that affect our community. Although the highlight for me had to be the great bus rides there and back - this was hilarious!

Then... then there was the main event, the one we’d had all been waiting for, it took place on Friday. It was our Glenrothes Yoscars/Band Night which we had been preparing for 2 months. Everyone spent the day working on finishing touches and setting up the hall for the evening which was at the Rothes Halls. I was at the HQ helping out on certificates, award winners and setting up the programme for the show. The event started at 18.00 and was opened by singer Elliot Mitchell. The Awards were The Music Award; Peer Educator of the Year Award; Sports Award; Health Recognition Award; Volunteer Award; Democracy & Citizenship Recognition Award and Overall Achiever Award. Other achievers were also recognized. Each Award was presented by local councillors.

After refreshments the second event of the night took place which was the Band Night. Although the genre of music was personally not my thing, it did attract a crowd of young people who enjoyed it very much and for me that is what it is about. This was what made the event really rewarding seeing that our hard work had paid off and that we had done something great for other young people in our area. Afterwards to celebrate our success some of us had an after party at Sandra’s house which was awesome.

I look back at all the events of last week with extreme pride and happiness and can safely say that I have taken bucket loads away from it. The week for me created a lot of self confidence and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The week also built us up as a team and created some great moments and memories. I hope there is more of this sort of events in the future because after this week I definitely want to get stuck in and do some more amazing work.