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Travelling Ahead Spring Newsletter 2016

First things first - please make sure young people get to see this newsletter by printing it out and giving them a copy or sharing it on your organisation's social media - thank you

Travelling Ahead have been busy planning and running regional fourms in the South East and South West of Wales.  Due to organising dates around GCSE exams and National Tests we will be heading up to North Wales at the end of June on the 27th for our North Wales Regional Forum. Contact us here if you want to come along

We are also busy organising the next two meetings for Travelling Ahead's Youth Advisory Group and we are hoping plenty of Advisory Group members can join us -see below for more details

Our new web site has been going through some changes and is getting closer to completion  - its looking good!  We hope to share the Your Rights Toolkit very soon and start using with groups.  Some of you have helped us develop this toolkit along with the support of Dynamix. We would like to hear from anyone who would be interested in delivering this package.

South West Regional Forum

We were invited by The Unity Project to hold the South West Regional Forum at Morfa Isaf Farmhouse where they were staying for the week with young people.  Although the weather wasn't as glorious as we hoped for we felt lucky enough that the slight rain we did have didn't stop any of the outside activity.  After a breakfast of bacon, egg, mushrooms and sausages cooked on the fire everyone was ready to get into their workshops.  Careers Wales came and spoke to the young people about their interests and the options available to them.  There was a nice bit of excitement about a six week summer course at the university in Aberystwyth and we would love to hear about how it goes. 

Travelling Ahead ran a workshop about how the young people would like to see the project develop during our next round of future funding.

In the afternoon we had Buzzard Chris to provide some bushcraft activities for the young people. They were working with sticks and branches making rope from bark and wooden pegs, a clever skill to have when you're out in the wilderness!

South East Regional Forum

We returned again to the University of South Wales for our South East Regional Forum.  Our numbers increased from 8 young people at this event in the autumn to 21 young people joining us this time in the spring.  We had the New Leaf Forum from Cardiff, The COBS from Merthyr, the  Equal Project from Torfaen and we welcomed a new group of young people from Liswerry high School in Newport.

The young people took part in two workshops:

Travelling Ahead held a workshop to gather the views of the young people about the way they would like to see the project develop in the future. It was clear that more meetings and events where young people can get together were considered very important. 

Liz and Darren from First Campus who support the South East Forums provided a presentation on what university life can offer, looking outside of the box to help young people understand all the experiences on offer.  University life is much more than just going to lessons!

In the afternoon the film company Winding Snake came along to run an animation workshop, everyone had a go using IPADS and then went outside to take part in some filming.  It looked as if everyone was having fun and we can't wait the see the edited results from our budding film makers.  Just think there will come a time when we do not need the support of outside agencies as the young people will be able to do all the filming themselves.......is it too early to think of a social enterprise?

Travelling Ahead's Youth Advisory Group

Travelling Ahead are planning the next two Youth Advisory Group meetings in July and September. We are going to be looking at how we can put all the responses from the young people for developing the project into a plan.  We need the young people to decide the important areas and what they would like us to focus on for the next three years.  We will keep you informed of Youth Advisory Group's decisions - dont  forget you can see the short film they made here at their Media Skills Workshop with Travellers' Times and they also feature in the latest Travellers Times magazine with a whole page on the work they have been doing

THANK YOU

Travelling Ahead would like to say a big thank you to all our partners who have helped run the Regional Forums and our other activities by offering your time and by supporting young people - please do feel free to give us feedback on the project and what you think we should be working towards in the future