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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.

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

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

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.

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

Presentation training Christmas Dinner

Rt Hon Graham Evans MP visit

We have about 25 young Coyaction volunteers currently with more on the way!

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

Thankyou to everyone who funds and supports us, we could not

do this without your generosity as a voluntary provision