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I think this club is amazing. So many opportunities.
Bolton Lads and Girls Club provides a range of activities, support and opportunities for
children and young people across Bolton.
My two elder sons, who are 13 and 10 have been coming here for years. Er, it’s always
been a place for them to come and socialise and relax in a great, supervised environment.
Bolton Lads and Girls Club has run for over a 100 years and it’s done so on this partnership
between local people, local business and the council.
Everything we do here is all about raising ambition, vision and aspiration amongst the
children and young people that come through the doors.
My children have been coming here since for as long as I can remember, and it gives them
somewhere to go, rather than hanging about on street corners
and possibly getting into trouble.
In Bolton we have pockets of very underprivileged and vulnerable youngsters, that sometimes
don’t know what time they will have something to eat on which day, that wear the same clothes
for weeks on end, where there are families where there have been no-one in employment
for several generations.
It’s just about giving them something, somewhere to go, something to do, and feel special.
And once you get them through the door that is where the interesting bit comes, because
then you can start challenging the sort of cycle of unemployment – third, fourth generation
of unemployment in the household – and start breaking that down and slowly getting young
people to realise that it doesn’t have to be that way.
You can see the difference in people when they’ve been coming here, like I’ve been
coming here for 10 years now; I’m a totally different person than I was, back then. When
you see people coming and going, and you just see it in their faces: it’s a place where
you wanna be.
If I wouldn’t have been here I reckon I’d be out on the streets causing trouble, like
some of my other mates, which have gone down, like, the wrong path, and I think coming here
has took me down the right one.
I started coming here because I had an aggression problem, and my aggression problem was soon
sorted out by Lindsey and Phil banging on at me to stop hitting the lads.
We’re trying to give children and young people a look at what’s out there for them,
what are the opportunities on offer. Their lives don’t have to be like the lives of
family members that have not been in employment, that have failed traditionally at school,
and that have been below the breadline for many years.
It’s good having the experience and being able to do stuff like the young leaders programme,
because it opens up, like, so many options for you, and gives you different paths to
go down and gives you new experiences.
I’m, like, good at sports and stuff so I thought yeah if I do sports I could be like
a person who teaches football or cricket or something and then you could be someone who,
like, makes a real big difference to a child. That makes me happy 'cause it means I’m achieving
something and kids are looking up to me.
What I wanna do when I’m older is work here, like a volunteer.
We have 408 active volunteers and these are local people that give up their time to support
the town’s youngsters.
Some people spend, like, every night just volunteering for young kids like us.
When people have trouble, or upset and angry they just go to them.
Without the volunteers this wouldn’t be the club it is now.
Local people want to invest in their local communities and, more important than anything
else, they want to invest in young people.
Over 200 local businesses support the work of Bolton Lads and Girls Club, and predominantly
that’s on a financial basis.
It’s about running things at arm’s length at the council, about giving local people
power and ownership, and, I do believe that once you’ve done that, those services end
up being far better, and far more appropriate and far more responsive to local needs.
Quite simply we ask people to get involved, and if you ask, nine times out of ten people
say yes, I’d love to. Whether it’s a volunteer, who gives up two Thursday evenings, to ensure
that young people have opportunities here. Whether it’s the staff team, the private
sector engage, it’s about people and it’s about people that makes this organisation
a success.