Centre Spot CIC has received funding to deliver an exciting two year project for up to 30 young people from the Friar Park area of Wednesbury age 12-16 years old. People’s Health Trust has invested £44,100 in the “Creating a better Friar Park Project”, using money raised by Health Desire through The Health Lottery.

The two year project will deliver weekly sport and media activities, and will also include day trips, workshops led by inspirational speakers, and social action initiatives. We hope to create stronger links between 30 young people from the Friar Park estate. Within activities of shared interests 15 young people will meet and supported by Centre Spot staff, develop positive relationships.

As a highly deprived community young people locally are regularly drawn into negative behaviours and harmful friendships and relationships. Young people locally need to create positive relationships with their peers where they can talk about their future and aspirations and be encouraged and supported by one-another to achieve these.

“We believe the creation of positive connections and relationships will have a long-term impact on these young people through having supportive relationships with peers who also want to move their lives forward positively. We hope these connections and perception of social action work will also create more positive connections within other people locally”. Manny Abbeyquaye – Centre Spot Director

Centre Spot have received a National Lottery grant to explore the history of traditional playground games in the UK.

Centre Spot have been granted over £50,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to help young people learn about their own heritage, through the exploration of traditional playground games.

The exciting new project will be based in the Black Country area and benefit children 8 – 11 years old, who are interested in volunteering for this project.

The project will focus on traditional playground games, where they came from and how to play them. Centre Spot also wants to create educational workbooks and a DVD that will support the project and help bring back playground games into our schools and communities.

The project will concentrate on games such as tag, hopscotch, British bulldog and many more games that will teach young people about their backgrounds and show the children how to exhibit this information, through film making. The DVD will explore these games in detail and tell the stories behind them, as well as communicate how these games were played. Centre Spot want volunteers to lead the sessions with the help of co-ordinators and deliver the sessions to primary schools in the area.

Children are now introduced to televisions, computers, and phones at earlier ages, which now seem to dominate their lives. More and more children are growing up inactive, due to the overuse of these devices and we have somehow forgotten that play is a major part of a child’s development. Playground games are a fun and simplistic way of keeping the children in our community active, as well as furthering them to learn essential life skills, such as communicating with others and being creative. The project itself will open up more opportunities for young people to volunteer and gain necessary experience, needed to help them progress personally and professionally.

This project will benefit our community by looking at popular games in the Black Country and comparing those to which are played nationally. Through this we want to compare both the differences and similarities between them and educate young people on those which are distinct to the Black Country. In addition to teaching children about their heritage, we want to show children that physical activity can be fun and creative. We think that playground games are an advantage to children and schools across the Black Country, so we want to demonstrate this, with our project.

Centre Spot are a non-profit organisation that uses sport and physical activity to engage and develop young people. We want to help 20 young people, volunteer and engage other individuals, by collecting information about their heritage and achieving this through physical activity; which has been made possible by the National Lottery. We want to take this opportunity to explore how these games started, developed and why they have disappeared over the last 100 years. The project will help these games to be reintroduced to schools and our communities, as well as educating young people about the heritage of the Black Country.

Vanessa Harbar, Head of HLF West Midlands said:

“We are delighted to support this project, which, thanks to money raised by National Lottery players, will encourage children in the Black Country to explore the fascinating heritage behind traditional outdoor games, many of which have disappeared.”

Centre Spot CIC has been awarded a three-year grant of £90,832 to provide peer mentoring and training opportunities to young people living in areas of deprivation. Through the programme of support the project will support the young people to make positive life choices and provide the young people with better coping skills for the future.

Emmanuel Abbeyquaye, Director at Centre Spot CIC said of the funding award: “Thanks to this funding we will be able to support disadvantaged young people to gain a host of skills that will positively impact their lives for the future. In addition, the programme will support the young people to reach their full potential and raise their aspirations. Thank you, BBC Children in Need.”

Speaking of the new grants, Christina Jobe, BBC Children in Need Officer for the Central Region said: “All of the projects we fund work to make a real difference to the lives of disadvantaged children and young people, and these recently awarded grants to Centre Spot really will go on to change young lives in the area. These grants simply wouldn’t be possible without the support of our incredible fundraisers, so thank you to everyone who have made these grants possible.”

BBC Children in Need funding relies on the energy and commitment of thousands of fundraisers and supporters across the UK who donate their time and money to support the Appeal. Whether it’s cake sales, wearing pyjamas to school or having a song and dance, every penny of the money raised goes towards supporting projects across the UK.

All grants go to projects working with children and young people living in the UK who may be affected by homelessness, neglect, abuse, or poverty, or those who have faced challenges in their lives such as serious illness, disabilities, and psychological disorders.

Centre Spot are pleased to be one of 11 projects selected across the country by England Rugby and Comic Relief, who announced the first set of Try for Change small grant recipients.

The Try for Change small grants round is the first initiative in England Rugby’s partnership with Sport Relief. Aimed at supporting smaller charities, community groups and grassroots rugby clubs in England, the grants offer projects up to £10,000 to support the valuable work they are doing to improve lives through rugby.

Over 40 organisations, including 17 rugby clubs, applied for a small grant, with 11 projects ultimately being awarded funding. The successful projects are located across England and use rugby and its core values as a tool to greatly improve and support the lives of marginalised and disadvantaged people.

Dominic Proctor, RFU Chair for Try for Change and RFU Board Member said “It’s great to see such deserving projects being awarded grants in our first round of funding. The projects selected each demonstrate how rugby has the ability to improve the lives of millions of people from all walks of life and I’m excited to see how they each of them utilise their grants to make a real difference over the coming months.”

Sue Wicks, Strategic Lead, Sport for Change at Comic Relief said: “The small grant recipients have each shown their commitment to making positive change through rugby, with many already demonstrating just how important such initiatives are to individuals in need. There’s a great spectrum of projects covering numerous disadvantaged and socially isolated groups across England, and I can’t wait to see how they continue to grow their fantastic programmes over the coming year to provide positive change within their communities.”

Centre Spot will be working with local schools and community groups within the Smethwick area of Sandwell. The project will work with young people at risk of/engaged in substance abuse and/or anti-social behaviour providing regular structured sporting activities and group learning to increase activity, improve emotional health, well-being, and life chances, whilst focusing on citizenship and team working to promote community cohesion and positive attitudes.