North Durham Academy – Development Through CanTeam
Blog written by Dillon, Thomas, Shay, and Leland, student volunteers and team leaders of the CanTeam Crew at North Durham Academy.
Introduction
“CanTeam is a community driven organisation which strives to provide members of the community with replenishing and delicious meals and bringing those people together to encourage people to talk and engage with their community. I’ve enjoyed working with CanTeam as I was able to be part of an event which helped to bring people together and enjoy time as a community.”
“CanTeam is an event that brings people together to communicate and bring families together to meet and talk over things that are needed to live.”
“CanTeam is a group of people who make a project to bring families together with an event and try and make them work together, and enjoy this “little” get together.”
“CanTeam is an event where they invite younger people that are in school to come have a meal and speak and get along with other people. I first found out about this when I came home, and I got asked if I wanted to do an event for the school and I said yes. I am so glad I got involved!”
My CanTeam Journey
“I’ve become more confident and comfortable with talking to people who I don’t know or wouldn’t be able to speak with, if not for this event. I handled the speech, but I only did that for two weeks, so if I was to partake again, I’d do the speech and do it for until the end of the event.”
“I developed camera skills and that learning certain angles matter to make things as good as they could be, and some social skills since I talked with people I didn’t know and also and team skills and how important they are.”
“I have developed social skills from this, since I really didn’t like to talk to people”
“How to give people their food and to do speeches!”
Final Thoughts:
“I would totally recommend CanTeam to people, as I went from being unable to speak to strangers to being more comfortable and actually enjoying talking to others.”
“To be more open and to do more things you are more uncomfortable with. That not everything can be done on your own, and that teamwork is important and it can help you in the future with most jobs.”
“I would recommend this, since it is an enjoyable event and it was fun to go there and do this with friends, so that you can have some people to sit with if you don’t want to talk to people you don’t know.”
“People should get involved because it is very fun to get involved with other people and communicate. It’s good to see other families make new friends/ connections. The advice I would give is for people to have a go and that it is great fun!”
Experience Summarised:
“Very worth it and a good use of time”
“It was fun and enjoyable!”
“Fun and enjoyable!”
“Really good event and made some new friends.”
Background:
CanTeam is an after-school social dining initiative co-designed with young people that encourages students, their families and local communities to enjoy nutritious and delicious food and activities together.
Launched by Future Foundations in June 2023, CanTeam aims to embed a transformative food culture within schools, enabling young people and communities to thrive.
Over the first 6 months of the initiative, CanTeam was funded and supported by the Big Change Big Education Challenge to develop the concept, consult beneficiaries and test the idea. In January 2024, CanTeam was announced a winner of the Big Education Challenge and is being supported by Big Change to scale across the UK.
In partnership with Chartwells UK and Durham Council, we ran a 6-week series of CanTeam events. This followed a 2-day workshop led by Professor Greta at North Durham Academy, exploring the Whole School Food environment, and is part of a wider set of projects being set up and evaluated.
Click here to read an article about the series of events.
We are excited to continue developing CanTeam and the impact we can have on the health and wellbeing of young people and their families throughout the UK.
Find out more:
- Read about CanTeam, our BIG idea for change here
Get in touch, if you think you can help…
- Email: jon@future-foundations.co.uk
We are looking for schools and partners who share our vision and can help us pilot CanTeam at scale.