Youth Cafe revamp

Today the youthcafe recieved the finishing touch's to its second extension and revamp.

more news will be realsed in the coming weeks as we plan for a number of changes to our delivery of services to young people, these changes are yet to be approved but they are likely to include:

3 seperate sessions for children

a free breakfast club

a homework club

7 - 11 year old group

12 - 16 group

17 - 25 group

And free healthy eating sessions everyday cooking meals for upto 50 young people per day.

We also hope to run outdoor sports activites twice a week

watch this space for more news soon!!!!

RYAG's going GREEN

RYAG has today agreed instalation of over £200,000.00 worth of sharp solar electric array to power the HUB. The system should supply over 70% of all the power used by our facility.

Each of the arrays that will be installed can produce 61.2KWp ensuring that the group and our facility are not just financially sustainable but also enviromentaly sustainable.

This development along with our use of BREEM guidance and advise from the Carbon Trust will set RYAG to a flying start with its 3 year treck towards the Carbon Standard Award.

The system will be installed and running in October 2010

Our thanks Wyn Roberts at the SRA for guidence with this instalation.

New funds approved

Thank you the Tudor Trust for agreeing to refund RYAG, a massive investment of £73,000 will see the group able to improve internal management and free up staff time to look at expansion and growth into new facilities and social enterprise projects across the town.

With two other more substantial grants in their final stages the potential for us to develop into new area's is looking very promising.

The group has moved slowly forward over the past 12 month, but we hope that by December 2010 we will be in the position to take significant strides forward in contributing to the Regeneration for our town. Our most recent no frills consultation has just been completed by the Infoshop which may change our direction, but at this point the priorities for the next 3 years might be:

Complete the third phase of our HUB proposal.

Develop circa 15 apartments for young people.

consolidate our current programmes and move away from grant dependency.

creation of a young persons gym & fitness centre.

creation of an arts facility.

creation of a community bakery.

More Future Jobs on the way

Another 30 Future Jobs will be created at RYAG thanks to Rhyl City Strategy starting from this month, these posts will include: construction, admin, catering, driving, peer support and gardening. Please contact your JCP advisor if you want to know more.

David Miliband MP visits the HUB

Chris Ruane and David Miliband visited the HUB this week to meet with some of the young people employed under the Rhyl City Strategy managed FJF programme.

Both spent time talking with Young People from Rhyl who have been employed under the programme and Bridgette Handley who manages the FJF before taking the now customary tour of the facility along with a brief visit to see phase 2 works that are underway on the corner of Elwy Street.

Serco CEO visit's Rhyl

Tom Riall, Chief Executive of Serco Civil Government visited Rhyl this week and meet with Ann Jones AM, Iwan Prys Jones DCC, Clive Wolfendale CIAS, and RYAG. As part of the visit, Tom also stopped off to meet the team at Serco’s Business Processing Centre which the company have recently located in Rhyl. This has created 16 much needed new jobs for our area.

We are sure many others from the statutory and voluntary sector will send out our thanks to Serco for choosing Rhyl, Wales and the UK as a whole as the location for their centre.

Private, Voluntary and Statutory joint working will be key to the redevelopment of Rhyl and Denbighshire as a whole and we hope Serco and other large companies will look at Rhyl as a potential venue to place their future activities and create employment opportunities for local people.

With Rhyl being a Strategic Regeneration Area, having a first class College, the Rhyl City Strategy, ILM's and a mass of voluntary and statutory resources at hand then a strong local workforce can be ready to meet the needs of business looking to invest in our community which will also benefit from a rebranding project being led by DCC.

Thanks again to Gareth Matthews for his continued commitment to the regeneration of Rhyl!

History please

RYAG is on the hunt for old pictures of 1 Elwy Street & 69-75 Wellington Road. If you are able to help please email us:

shane @ ryag.org.uk

Anthing from the early 1900's to the new millenium would be helpful, above is one we have already located.

Contraception Service @ the infoshop

A new young persons contraception service will launch from the infoshop this month for young people living in Rhyl.

More infomation is avaliable from the Infoshop:

0800 232 1230 or infoshop@ryag.org.uk

The service will only be avaliable during evening hours, and does not currently provide emergancy pregnacy testing.


Other locations for emergancy contraception and pregnacy testing in Rhyl are:

West Rhyl Young Peoples Project
30 Bedford Street
Rhyl
Denbighshire
LL18 1SY

Telephone: 01745 351293

Boots the Chemist Ltd
49-51 High Street
Rhyl
Denbighshire

Telephone: 01745 344147

Online information is also avaliable on www.ruthinking.co.uk

Volunteering aboard

The infoshop is host to UNA exchange next week, places are avaliable for young people to volunteer on international projects with UNa.

Three young people will be participating this year on exchange programmes from RYAG

For more information contact the infoshop or visit the UNA website.

http://www.unaexchange.org/

Phase 2 Preview

This is an image of the phase 2 building due to be complete in June 2010.
There is still much work to be done, but we are slowly mving forward. To date all the foundations and steal framwork has been completed.
The first floor will house training rooms and offices for a number of organisations who will start to move in by the middle of June.

Small Workplace Health Award

RYAG achieves the Bronze Small Workplace Health Award, now onto Silver!

Following the example set by Rhyl City Strategy we have completed the requirments for the SWHA and will collect our award at the Millenium Stadium in cardiff in May.

We would encourage any other 3rd sector groups to find out more about the award and get invloved.

The small workplace health award is the new national mark of quality for health and well-being in the workplace, for businesses and organisations employing fewer than 50 people.

It has three levels of award (bronze, silver and gold) to recognise each development stage achieved.

Free support and advice is available for small businesses and organisations to develop health and well-being initiatives in the workplace.

How to apply

You can confirm your interest in free support and advice by contacting your regional workplace health adviser or by visiting the website:

North Wales

Carol Tunnah on 01978 356974

more information can be found here: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/health/improvement/work/small/?lang=en

Rhyl Little Theatre - Another Way?

The current theatre tenants of the Little Theatre are discussing with DCC a possible surrender of their current lease and working with several other organisations interested in the education of children through the performing arts to create a new theatre consortium.

RYAG are interested in being part of that new consortium and have been discussing with the potential members a feasibility study into a new development plan for the theatre.

Sport Relief

23 members and RYAG staff put on their running shoes and decided to raise money for Sport Relief. Over recent weeks they have collected sponsorships to raise money and trained hard.

The day started early on the Sunday morning at 10am for we had two minibus loads of young people to take to St. Asaph for the 11am warm up. The warm up was great fun although there was certainly a lack of rhythm in our group J. By 11.20am we were all warmed up (some of us worn out) and ready for the 11.30am off. There were probably a hundred people young and old who had gathered for this great fund raiser, which added to the great atmosphere.

By 12.30pm we were all finished, red faces to match the red ribbons which held our medals. As a member of staff I felt immense pride at the great effort that the young people from RYAG had put in and all the other youngsters who had turned up for the event.

Phase 2 works underway

Over the next 8 weeks Phase 2 of the HUB will be built, turning the old 1970's building which was once the Rhyl Music Shop, and most recently our YouthCafe into a two storey modern and energy efficient community facility.

The Youth Cafe will benefit from an extra 300 sqft of room on the ground floor along with new offices for A4e, while the first floor will house 6 new offices, 2 large training rooms and 3 one2one meeting rooms along with an open plan hotdesk area.

Work is set to be complete in May 2010, we hope to keep a photo journal over the next few weeks so please watch this space!

Future Jobs get underway

Thanks to the Rhyl City Strategy Future Jobs scheme RYAG have been able to secure 37 new jobs for young people over the next 18 months, with the first 6 now employed under our construction programme we look forward to a brighter future for local young people seeking local employment.
All RYAG's jobs are trainee posts, with those young people being employed by our group also recieving training to enhance their future employablity.

RYAG will be employing the following:

construction workers
admin workers
youth / community workers
IT Support workers
catering workers