Following 6 months in my role as Community Development officer, I was fortunate enough to interview and successfully secure the role as Senior Community Development officer. This new role involves working as a Princes Trust Team Leader, as well as continuing working with the local community through community engagement to ensure our projects are meeting their needs, and working with young people in a youth club setting - all under the Brighter Futures project.

I was the Community Development Officer of the Brighter Futures initiative at Community Central Halls. Our aim is to deliver a support programme that will offer increased opportunities for local young people and adults at different life stages and empower/equip them with key life skills, confidence, and increased support networks needed to overcome existing barriers, progress to positive destinations, and experience improved quality of life.

Working in the southside of Glasgow in many deprived areas, including Govan, Penilee and Pollok. Working mostly in centre-based youth clubs and occasionally as a detached youth worker. I covered a wide range of activities with the sole aim of getting young people involved in the community, giving young people a platform to have their voices heard and ensure young people were involved in decisions that affected them. As well as providing a safe and nurturing environment where young people felt accepted and comfortable to express themselves without judgement.

My first role was a Customer Service Modern Apprentice in Glasgow Life. In this role, I worked with the public in a variety of different environments under the local council banner, such as Libraries, Leisure Centres and Community Centres. this role equipped me with a great amount of knowledge of how to deal with the public and how to take responsibility for customer relationships. It also helped develop transferrable skills such as team management and relationship building across different sectors and personally boosted my confidence in a social aspect as the role required good communication.

The work I had done with Urban Roots started as Zoom call sessions due to the COVID Pandemic. We met around 9-12 young people every Tuesday on Zoom, where me and a colleague done ice breakers, created quizzes and played some games that were easy to play online. As restrictions eased in Scotland, we moved away from Zoom and started to have face-to-face contact with the young people in a detached youth-work setting. We took an asset-based approach, utilising a forest area in Toryglen, that had been set up by Urban Roots pre-pandemic, to meet the young people and facilitate our sessions there where we played a lot of outdoor games, built fires and made meals using the fire. The funding for this post short-lived but this post gave me a tremendous insight in to maximising detached youth work,