BFree Youth Café and Leatherhead Youth Work

BFree Youth Cafe

BFree is our relational hub, open every day after school for local young people aged 11-17. The aim of BFree is to provide a safe, positive space for young people to meet friends, enjoy activities & games, and get to know our youth workers. BFree allows our team to build positive relationships with local young people, and by doing so we can understand their needs and support them in other areas of their lives. Our team can help with counselling, careers advice and support with learning specific skills.

BFree is open Monday-Friday from 3:15 until 6:15pm, and is currently attended by approximately 70 different young people every week. Each week we run competitions, arts & crafts. Our state of the art space is equipped with a pool table, table football and 4 games consoles.

If you are interested in volunteering with us at BFree, please get in touch.

FreeStyle Residential Camp

Freestyle is an annual youth camp which provides over 40 local young people with an action packed time away from home during the easter holidays. The camp has been running for 9 years, and offers 4 days of games, swimming, sports, workshops and the legendary talent show.

Freestyle is one of our most popular projects and gives local young people fantastic memories.

We would like to thank the Community Foundation for Surrey for providing funding for this project.

Connect

Connect is a targeted support group which runs regularly for young people aged 11 to 17. It provides a safe space to be able to develop lasting friendships and expresses themselves freely. At Connect young people discuss topics relevant to them, eat dinner together, play games and take part in different activities.

Connect is run fortnightly, by our youth work team, along side our dedicated volunteers. It’s aim is to build the young people’s confidence and self-esteem to help them in their school, home and future lives.

Explore

Explore is a fortnightly group that welcomes young people from all backgrounds to discuss Christian faith based topics. The sessions tend to start with eating dinner together and then are followed by exploring a different theme each week.

BFree+

BFree+ is a dedicated evening session for older young people. The drop-in youth cafe is an extension of our relational hub, BFree and provides a safe space for Years 10 – 12 to spend time with their friends and get to know our youth workers better.

Since coming out of the pandemic, we have seen a tendency for young people in Years 10 – 12 to engage less with BFree and our other projects. We’ve launched BFree+ to provide a space purely for older young people. By reconnecting with this age group, our youth workers can provide continual support for young people from Years 7 – 12 and beyond.

BFree+ is open for Years 10 – 12 on a Thursday evening during term time from 6:15 – 8pm. Older young people can enjoy all the usual BFree activities and games including the latest consoles, a pool table and table football. There is also the chance to make cheese toasties and have their say in what they would like to see at BFree+.

If you would like to volunteer at BFree+, please get in touch.

Making Good

Making Good offers young people the chance to give back to their community by taking part in social action volunteering activities during the half term. This usually involves projects such as conservation work, litter picks, painting or clearing community areas. On the third day of the project, young people enjoy a trip as a team building reward, and past trips have included trampolining at Gravity Force, going to the cinema, and bowling.

Schools Work

LYP is proud to partner with local primary and secondary schools.

Group Work at Therfield School

We run regular blocks of group work that are commissioned by the school in response to difficulties that arise with particular year groups and specific issues. We have run sessions with year 8 girls focused on self-esteem, sessions with year 9 boys focused on school engagement, and sessions with year 9 girls focused on behaviour and building confidence.

Transition at Leatherhead Trinity School

We run an annual Transition scheme at Leatherhead Trinity School, helping year 6 students prepare for the upcoming transition to secondary education. We focus on looking at their hopes and fears, aspects of the school day including timetables, and where to go for help and support.

Key Work

Key Work is an additional support project for young people aged 11-17, who have been identified through community youth work, requiring extra one to one support from a youth worker. Key Work provides the space for a young person to talk things through with a youth worker on a regular basis, and allows the youth worker to monitor the young person’s wellbeing and current life situations, being the main contact for further referrals.

Into The Wild

Into The Wild is a project to help young people experience the outdoors and enjoy the local countryside, by providing an expedition which includes wild camping in hammocks and learning survival skills. Young people have the opportunity to earn the John Muir award through completing the project which is now in its third year.

Summer

Each summer we run a full schedule of activities and trips. This gives young people lots to get involved with over the long summer and keeps them with involved with positive activities.

Our summer schedule includes sports activities on the local recreation ground, and a series of weekly trips to attractions which have included the beach, London, water parks, air-hop, climbing, surfing and activity centres!

Romania

Since 2012, we have been taking young people from Leatherhead to help serve poor communities in Romania. We partner with Heart for Romania and Dare to Dream, both of whom work within some of the poorest villages in Transylvania; many living without running water, toilets or electricity.

Each year we run a summer camp for over 50 Roma teenagers, providing them with a fun holiday and access to leisure facilities which they normally wouldn’t have. These trips are life changing for both sets of young people.

Our teams from Leatherhead are mostly made up of young people aged 16-19 who have been involved with our youth projects for a number of years. The Romania trip gives them a chance to visit a culture which is much poorer than theirs, and experience new language, food and ways of living.

Faith Work

LYP is a Christian faith based organisation. As such we support young people with their faith journeys through a variety of our projects. We partner with Churches and other faith organisations to provide this support.

Central to our vision is…

• To be a team who live out our Christian values and ethos with love, authenticity and integrity in relationship with others, particularly young people.
• To provide projects that enable all young people to develop their whole lives, including their spiritual lives, and experience a journey on our youth work continuum towards transformation.
• That all our projects are shaped and designed to meet the needs of young people and give them the best outcomes possible.

Christian Unions – LYP supports Christian unions in some of the schools we work in.

Faith groups – We run groups for young people who would like to explore the Christian faith and develop their faith journey.

Next Level – Run in partnership with the local churches in Bookham this is our monthly youth led Christian worship night, on the third Friday of every month.

Aspire

Aspire is about helping young people plan for their future and find the education or employment they are looking for. Many young people in our community finish education with low or no qualifications, resulting in a number of young people becoming NEET in our area. Our aim is to come alongside young people to raise their confidence and aspirations and help them to fulfill their potential.

We work with young people aged 15-20 who are NEET or unsure about their future, by helping them to create CVs, finding and applying for apprenticeships and employment, and supporting them to gain qualifications to boost their CV, such as AQA awards, Duke of Edinburgh, and First Aid certificates.

To date, Aspire has worked with over 130 young people. Each one of those young people finished with a CV full of experience, and we helped find an apprenticeship or job for 60 of these young people.

If you are a local employer who might be interested in taking on a young apprentice, please get in touch.