“We always leave room for the input of those attending, as it is important that the activities are youth led”
We had a very busy period in preparing for the return to football (which involved a lot of cleaning and organising) and then we had the Easter school holidays which saw us deliver nearly 200 activity packs in partnership with Friends of Fulwell, Sunderland City Council, Morrisons Seaburn, Fulwell Community Library, Sainsburys Fulwell, Cuthbertson Court and with the support of our wonderful young volunteers.
We now settle into a more normal working routine as lockdown begins to lift, with plenty of football on evening and weekends as well as a return to some of our school work.
We also look forward to our summer season of holiday camps and yes that means a return of our much loved beach camp! Having missed all of our 2020 beach fix, our staff and volunteers are beyond excited to welcome everybody back for May half term (which I do believe is mainly June this year!) and summer 2021 sessions.
If Covid-19 restrictions lift in line with the government pathway we will be able to (finally) use our wonderful coastline to deliver activities again, getting children and young people out into the great outdoors and active in the fresh air, helping them to become happier and healthier.
Many of our favourite activities will return with coastal walks, rock pooling and shelter building firmly on the list of things to do, along with, my personal favourites, rock painting and games on the beach.
While we always have a loose plan of how the day will run we always leave room for the input of those attending, as it is important that the activities are youth led and we ensure that the kids get to do what they want to. Sometimes this is not possible due to weather and tide times but we will always try and incorporate their favourites into the day.
Alongside the beach activities we also have a volunteer programme that runs with our youth club (11 +), where those who attend can gain volunteering experience at the beach camps being mentored by North East Sport staff to gain valuable life skills which are fantastic for their CV and applications to college, university and future endeavours. We strive to assist in giving them the tools to be healthy, happy, hopeful young people who then can go on achieve everything they want to in their lives.
We will be in touch very soon with how to book, along with more details on venues and any restrictions that might be in place.
While we are so grateful that so many people are so keen to get a place on beach camps please don’t message asking us to reserve places before the booking system goes live as we can’t allocate places before then and we really don’t want to disappoint anybody by saying we can’t.
In the meantime we hope everybody enjoys the slow return to normality and being able to see family and friends again and we look forward to seeing you in June.
“My girls had the most amazing time at the summer beach camp! Thank you for making the summer holidays even more exciting. Looking forward to next year.”
“Millie and Lucy had a fabulous time at beach camp, they’ve enjoyed all of the activities and there was a lot, not once did they say they didn’t like it, also the staff were great remembering names after 1st week. asking about activities they’d told them they were going to do outside of beach camp and how they got on , Absolutely couldn’t praise them enough, brilliant for kids in the holidays Thank you again everyone looking forward to next year”
Please note all photos were taken pre Covid-19 pandemic and so no social distancing is in place.