The first week of Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s Summer 2021 National Citizen Service (NCS) delivery is officially in the books, with 75 young people from across the city aged 16 and 17 successfully completing the two-week programme.
Activities including team building, stack climbing, archery and orienteering were on the agenda for Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s first day delivering the summer NCS project with Carnegie Outdoors at Leeds Beckett University, before the group returned to Emerald Headingley Stadium to choose and design their social action projects and attend workshops with organisations providing information and developing skills around money management, self confidence, public speaking and university life.
With temperatures soaring the young people were also given the opportunity to enjoy some time outdoors, taking part in a Rhinos Sports Day and completing a community mapping challenge around the wider Headingley area.
Having selected their social action projects and the organisations they would be supporting during the first week, the teenagers were then placed into small groups for week two and set out to complete their volunteering work in order to create positive change and give back to their local community.
Almost half of the wave chose to work on various renovation projects at Herd Farm Activity and Residential Centre, where they were asked to help repaint buildings, tidy up green spaces, repair fences, create new bike paths and generally support with the restoration of the site.
Meanwhile, other teams spent their week supporting local charities Trussell Trust and ‘Kicking for Grassroots’ which was founded by Leeds Rhinos player Luke Gale. Their social action projects therefore involved finding innovative ways to support the charity’s own fundraising and community support work which resulted in sponsored walks, bucket collections, foodbank deliveries and even a boot collection at last Friday’s Leeds Rhinos home match.
All in all, we saw all the young people benefit hugely from this experience and have a massively positive impact on their local community, whilst also gaining the skills and insight to broaden their CV’s and become responsible citizens and- most importantly- having so much fun!
Well done to everyone involved in Wave 1 of our NCS programme, and a special thank you to all the volunteers and Team Leaders who helped to make this all happen. We look forward to kicking off Wave 2 today with 45 more young people who are ready to make the most of their summer on NCS.
For more information about NCS, visit https://wearencs.com/ or contact our NCS Team Manager Michael Wooldridge on michael.wooldridge@leedsrhinosfoundation.org.
