Strawberry Line Weekend Work Skills Opportunities

Aim

We are seeking support to offer weekend work taster sessions to young people with learning disabilities.

We set up the Strawberry Line Cycle Project in 2020 as a not-for-profit community cycle hire. We wanted people to be able to get outdoors and active, exploring the Strawberry Line. We also wanted to offer people with learning disabilities a chance to get meaningful work and vocational training. 

Despite the difficulties arising from the Covid 19 crisis, our project has made many achievments. From having just the Project Coordinator in post in October 2019, we now have a team of 10 part time staff, half of this paid staff team would identify themselves as having learning disabilities. In addition to offering paid opportunities, we have also provided numerous training and work placement opportunities, this includes young people with disabilities on placement with us from their school or college or adult learners, keen to develop their workskills.

Having seen the sucesses made by these learners, we are keen to widen the available opportunities, in particular to teenagers with learning disabilities. Teenage years are so formative, and there are many aspects of regular teenage life that those with additional needs don't easily have access to. Having a part time job is one of those things, be it washing up in a pub, a paper round, sticking up in a skittle alley or waitressing. These part time jobs give teenagers the chance to be part of the adult world of work, to gain experience in serving customers, of being part of a team and of learning what jobs they may or may not like to do when they are older, some really valuable experiences. Our project will enable young learners with additinal needs to access something similar. With Support workers on hand, learners will be able to be part of our team, to learn new practical skills, to develop their interpersonal skills through serving our customers, to experience being in an adult setting and to feel better informed for the choices they will be making about the direction of their lives in their upcoming years. We are providing these opportunities at the weekends, so they can be accessed by young people who are in full time education Monday to Friday. The support we receive from Aviva will enable us to recruit Support Workers so the sessions can be offered at no charge to the learners.

This project successfully funded on 20th September 2022