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DAMASCUS
The DAMASCUS Youth Project started in 2002. The project runs youth clubs and activities in five neighbouring villages: Drayton, Appleford, Milton, Sutton Courtenay and Steventon (hence the acronym ‘DAMASCUS’) Rita Atkinson, member of the management committee explains: 'We were originally inspired by the fact that the five village churches were all working together with a joint vicar. We thought - why can’t we do that with young people’s activities? A few of us were thinking that there was nothing in the village for the eleven plus age group. So we thought we’d work together with the other villages to sort something out.
The original idea was to employ a youth worker to work as a befriender, spending time on the streets, someone the young people could relate to. We got a committee together, with at least one representative from each village - it was all adults at that stage, and I guess we had our own ideas about what we thought would work best. We got some money to employ the youth worker, and we had to sort out whether this was going to be a church project or a community project - some people really wanted a Christian youth worker because they wanted it to be linked to the churches - so we had to work through those issues. In the end we came to agree that the whole community needed to have confidence in the project, not just the church people.
We soon realised that our idea of ‘befriending’ wasn’t what the young people wanted. They thought it was hilarious that the youth worker was just hanging around at the shops. Some young people said it was activities they wanted. So we had to change our plans, and started putting on lots of activities instead. Actually the activities we put on ended up not just being activities - the team that we bought in to lead them also used to do sessions on teamwork and self esteem and other stuff.’
The project moved on, and in April 2004 the DAMASCUS bus was launched - a double decker, refurbished for free by the Oxford Bus Company. The bus takes it in turn to visit each village for a month, one night a week, and has proved to be an excellent focus for the activities. Upstairs is a café and snack area, and downstairs there’s an ‘x-box’ and screen for games. The young people have said they want it to be more frequent, but getting volunteers is the main barrier.
How did we get young people involved in deciding what the project should do? At first we did a few questionnaires - but that was all a bit remote. When we realised that the youth worker ideas wasn’t working we started holding some drop in sessions to find out different ideas from the young people - we were getting more confident interacting with them. We don’t have a token young person on the management committee - no-one was interested when we asked, and anyway we spend most of our meetings on the legal and technical stuff. Young people are getting more involved in the village though - in Sutton Courtenay we’re in the process of setting up a youth council for the village - that’s a spin-off from the project.
It’s a hard balance between - listening to adult’s ideas and showing that you value them - and also explaining to them that things can’t just be done their way, it’s what the young people want that’s important. The secret has been to get hold of one key person from each village.
How do we make sure it’s inclusive? To be honest the behaviour has been the hardest thing. There are young people, if it was my children I just wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour - but we’ve learnt we have to accept them because it’s their project. To be honest, that was when our project really started to work - when we learnt to overcome the hurdle of being disappointed by certain behaviour, but carried on anyway. I wouldn’t want anyone to think it ‘just works a treat’ - because it’s been a hard road. But we’re pleased, really pleased with how far it’s come.'
(From "Breaking Down Barriers", a report by David Fisher of ORCC)
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