Taking Our Winter Skills Project to Kendal Mountain Festival
In October 2022, we launched our latest Winter Skills Project, which will see a group of young people growing up in urban communities travel to the Cairngorms to experience the challenges of winter mountaineering. Having run this project for many years, we have witnessed first hand how life changing and inspiring this experience can be. And what better way to launch the project than to take a group of young people to Kendal Mountain Festival!
Our youth team were up early Friday morning to meet a group of 6 young people; 4 from Ashton Youth Club and 2 from Pitsmoor Youth Club, all raring to get in the minibus and travel up to the Lake District.
Young people were not just going to enjoy the festival, they also had the important task of raising funds for the project by selling hats to the public, which were kindly donated to us by Sprayway. So the first job was to create a rota and get to the stand, ready to start selling.
Although the main aim was to raise funds for the Winter Skills Project, as equally as important was the opportunities this presented for our young people – speaking to the public, communication, customer service skills, confidence, team work etc. Some of our young people had never spoken to the public before, and we couldn’t have been prouder of how they threw everything they had at selling the hats, really pushing themselves outside of their comfort zones and developing a whole host of interpersonal skills in the process.
At 11am on Saturday, our young people gave a talk on the Base Camp stage. They spoke about the young leaders programme (run in partnerships with The Outward Bound Trust and The North Face) as well as the importance of diversity and inclusion in the outdoors, relatable role models and the importance of exposure to the outdoors.
This was an incredible experience for our young people, most of whom have never presented/spoken to the public in this way before. We were immensely proud of how well they came across.
But it wasn’t all hard sweat and toil, there was plenty of inspiration and fun to be had too!
On Friday evening it was Snow Night! The team got to enjoy watching adventure films on snowboarding and skiing as well as enjoying the q&a sessions with the athletes.
And on Saturday evening the group split up with half going to the climbing night where they had the opportunity to climb with TNF athletes at Kendal Climbing Wall. The other half went to the Women In Adventure sessions, presented by our very own Rehna Yaseen!
Throughout the weekend, young people got to meet with people involved in the outdoor industry from professional outdoor athletes, such as Chris Bonnington, to outdoor community change makers.
The feedback we had from our young people was incredibly positive; they felt inspired, valued and came away feeling a part of the outdoor community. We have no doubt that this experience will stay with them for many years and has had a huge impact on their confidence and passion for the outdoors.
We are incredibly grateful to The North Face for supporting the Young Leaders Programme in partnership with The Outward Bound Trust, through which the trip to Kendal Mountain Festival was made possible.
With special thanks to Sprayway, and everyone who purchased a hat, we raised an amazing £1700 towards the 2023 Winter Skills Project.
Sprayway supports lots of grass roots community organisations and they stand out because they provide long term support. Sprayway have helped Lindley’s Ashton Youth Club for over 10 years, generously supplying and donating high quality equipment each year as well as funding. We are delighted to have their ongoing support are very appreciative for the difference they make to our youth projects.
