Group Befriending

The aim of group befriending is to promote social interaction within a variety of cultural, educational and leisure environments, such as playing rounders, going to the theatre, working on an art project, going canoeing. This allows social interaction to develop alongside the acquisition of new skills and experiences within these outlined environments. It also allows underprivileged young people to gain access, often for the very first time, to these activities and facilities. This allows for the simultaneous development of a variety of skills, or often acts as an initial trigger for encouraging new found interests in some of the activities to which they gain access. For example, a young person seeing a theatre production for the first time may be interested in pursuing acting or another theatre skill as a regular hobby, or by going to Taste for Adventure, a young person may be prompted to pursue other outdoor pursuits as a result, thus gaining physical skills they were previously unaware they could achieve on a personal level. Central to the work of these group-befriending events is the involvement of the young people at all stages of the development, planning and delivery of the activities. Project staff provide the necessary supervision to enable the young people to make their own firm decisions, adopt specific roles and responsibilities within the planning groups, and to ensure the desired outcomes are produced. Many of our events have been organised in direct response to the requests of the young people – our project aims to meet the social needs of the service users, to champion their interests and let their voice be heard in terms of developing a varied and active social programme for the project. This is an underlying principle that informs all our work within this area.