Today (10.02.11) I was to introduce Sanana and Meshika my business partners as such to the main place in which I work with young people where they soon will be volunteering as youth workers.
Myself, Sanana and Meshika meet at 6pm at the Sutton Life Centre (http://www.sutton.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=6924). The purpose of today’s informal meeting was so that the two lady’s could get a real feel of the building and a sense of where and who they we be working with.
The Sutton Life Centre.
I introduced Sanana and Meshika to my other colleagues at the Life Centre and also to some of the Young people of whom we may be working with, we also spoke a little about what we would be offering within our classes. Having this engagement with the YP and establishing a professional relationship with our fellow workers was extremely positive and I felt that this was step 1 in building a good report with the children and yp. We also needed to remember to remain professional at all times when communicating with the children and yp at the centre.
I felt that it would be a good idea if Sanana and Meshika attended the next sessional staff’s staff meeting that would be held at the Life Centre. I thought at this point we needed to make a “To Do List” as soon as possible so that we could get started on our project. To me it seemed like the children and yp got a good understanding about what we were going to be offering at our performing arts sessions and came up with some great ideas of their own that we can use. Luckily Sanana had prepared a contact list for those who were interested in coming to our sessions, so that once we start our project we are then able to contact those young people.
The Children and young people’s contact sheet.
Sanana also created this contact sheet to get a rough idea of what times and days the children and yp that already come to the centre are available.
Introducing the ladies to the children and young people went really well and everybody had a positive attitude towards our ideas. I did notice we need to avoid talking to the young people in particular, as if they are our friends, but over all the children, the young people and other staff members said they looked forward to us joining the team and starting our new project with the yp. I think what also helped us was ‘The question of the week?’ , where we put out a question in the window of the main entrance each week to see what response we get. That week the question was...
I am so glad that we had positive outcomes for this day because things could have gone the opposite way. I.e. the children, yp and also staff members might not have warmed to meeting Sanana and Meshika and we are grateful that everyone at the life centre was very positive about us starting our sessions there.
Now I, Sanana and Meshika had to wait patiently to her back for the people at the top (my boss) to see if we were able use the brilliant spaces such as the 360 room for our sessions.
The worst thing at this stage for us to happen would be that our request to use the spaces would get refused and/or that Sanana and Meshika wouldn’t be able to volunteer for the centre. On the other hand we might need to pay for the spaces which could be very expensive for us. Because the Life centre is government funded we would hate for this building to lose its funding and for the children and yp to have to start paying for the services that they use at the centre or even worse for it to be closed down.
Looking from another person’s perspective of this day maybe Sanana for instance, I think she thought a bit like me when I first went to the centre; the layout/design of the building was great, the room sizes were huge, the clean and large empty space have excellent potential for performances. On the other hand I remember her mentioning that the premises was badly advertised and that the building will start to lose its revenue very quickly but she looked forward to starting work at the centre and was interested in drawing more children/yp to the centre through our performing arts projects.
On this day I really valued the positive response from the staff at the Life Centre when introducing them to Sanana and Meshika, I also vauled the children and yp’s enthusiasm about our up and coming performing arts workshops and hearing their ideas was very inspiring.
Next time I would defiantly take more notes at a meeting like this but even though it was totally informal it would have been good to have read through notes about this day to have refreshed my memory whist later writing in my private journal.
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