On the 27th November NCS Autumn 2014 came to a close, celebrating the participants at their graduation ceremony. NCS Autumn started just over 4 weeks ago with 45 young people from 19 different schools from around Reading, Bracknell and Wokingham.
Along with 8 FF staff the group spent a week together, first at Condover Hall in Shropshire taking part in outdoor activities and getting to know their team, and then back in Reading learning about project management, their community and starting to plan for their very own social action project. Then the three teams were off on their own (with a little bit of help from our wonderful staff) to plan and delivery their projects. The projects were, once again, an amazing example of what can be achieved in 1 month. The teams worked incredibly hard over the 4 weeks to get their projects off the ground, they each had to complete 30 hours on their project in order to graduate with many of them going above and beyond.
The Creative Space targeted youth inactivity by doing up a community centre with plans to hold youth focused activities, IFP raised over £1000 and partnered with a charity to distribute tablets to schools and finally Remember Me worked to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s created impressive educational booklets and are setting up a buddy system for young people to spend time with those suffering from Alzheimer’s .
At the graduation ceremony each group presented their project and we were so impressed by the hard work and dedication by the teams- especially the project leaders who are all future CEO’s in the making! We also had Faith Adikpe attend, Faith is an NCS graduate from 2013 who has since gone on to be part of the National NCS commission board and attend the NCS leaders programme for the top 100 graduates from around the country. Faith spoke about her experiences since graduating from NCS and talked about opportunities available to all our Autumn 2014 graduates.
The judges always say it’s a tough decision but this time was harder than ever with an extremely high standard of projects and presentations. In the end, after much deliberation, Remember Me was awarded the top prize and commended by the judges for creating a unique, innovative and sustainable project. The team will be invited to present along with the 3 winning Summer teams at the FF Awards on the 13th of December. Why not come along and check them out?
NCS is now finished for the year – we’ve had over 200 young people and over 50 staff and volunteers take part in our Spring, Summer and Autumn programmes. A massive thank you to all the staff, participants, parents, community organisations, judges and charities that have supported the young people and their projects over 2014.
