Geeky Easter Treat

During the Easter holidays we partnered with Nova Street Teams again for their Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme. We delivered a ‘geek factory’ style session, including games consoles, Lego and board games.

On the Tuesday we were based at Together Church in Torquay. We started at 11.30 to set up everything and pray, and the young people arrived at 12. The Torquay sessions were only for those who booked on, so numbers were quite low. There were 4 young people there for the Tuesday session. We had a fun four hours playing on the consoles including classic games such as Mario Kart and Sonic the Hedgehog. We also played card games such as Dixit, Perudo and UNO. In addition, we set up a Lego competition with a prize for the best design around a river landscape. For lunch Paul, from Nova, cooked a delicious meal of stir-fried chicken and vegetables with noodles. The young people thoroughly enjoyed the time, and the 4 hours went by extremely quickly.

On the Thursday we were based at the Paignton provision in Victoria Square. This is a well-established provision where Nova run a drop in every Friday evening, so we saw a large number of young people throughout the evening.  The session ran from 5 to 9 with half an hour each end to set up a pack away. We provided the same activities as Tuesday ie. Consoles, Lego and games and the young people engaged with it on and off as they came and went! At one point in the evening, we played a very long game of Uno Flip with 3 girls and then Exploding Kittens which was fun but tense! Dinner was fish or chicken nuggets with chips from Scoffs which the young people loved. At approx 7:30pm the numbers of young people dropping in dwindled so we went on a walk about around Paignton. We went to the places that young people generally hang out including Victoria Park, Parkfield, Paignton sea front and the bus station. We handed out some chips to those that we know. It was a very different but equally enjoyable session.
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We always love to partner with Nova as they do amazing work with young people who are struggling and/or at risk. If you would like to know more about the work that they do search for NOVA Street UK on Facebook or Instagram.
Charlie Haywood
Article taken from LiNX Termly Newsletter (Summer 2023)