Agenda item

Cera O’Rourke, from Penistone FM provided members with an update on the Active Minds Project that is funded from the Supporting Young People ringfenced funds within the Working Together Fund.

Members were informed that there had been a significant increase in students being affected by a range of mental health issues including stress, anxiety, self harm, eating disorders and even suicide.  The project had been designed to engage young people to interact and connect post lockdown and help them to learn new transferable skills to gain confidence and improve wellbeing and health and resilience in the community. 

A 7 week project of fun activities was created with each week focussing on a different task.  Examples of each week were given with the first week being an icebreaker where people taking part got to know each other leading to the last 2 weeks of creating podcasts or videos.  

38 engagements had been achieved and 10 podcasts had been created.  Overall it had been reported that the course had improved students confidence with 3 students getting jobs and 5 reporting that they felt able to go to University. 

Hopes for the future were to help more young people by gaining further funding in order to hold more projects and also to connect with Penistone Grammar School in order to help students there. 

Members were shown a video that had been created and heard a podcast that had been produced by some of the students taking part in the project.

RESOLVED that thanks be given for the presentation and hard work undertaken by Penistone FM for their hard work in successfully delivering the project.