On a glorious sunny (and windy) summer day in June, YMCA Horsham went to a free Family Funday event at Bennetts Field.
The aim of being there was to promote a positive awareness of supported housing at Horsham Y Centre; and to promote YMCA Positive Placements, YMCA Dialogue and YMCA Safe Space in Brighton.
We had queues of people of all ages for the fun activity – a buzzing wire loop hand-eye coordination game – with groups of children having mini-competitions and parents trying their hand/eye coordination too. There was a ‘prize for every try’ and, for those interested, we related their efforts to what young people experience in supported housing – you need to keep going even when you hit the wire, you start again, you negotiate the twists and turns etc. and each ‘rest’ point illustrated bronze, silver, gold and platinum progress (the idea for this came from a young person living at the Y Centre!)
There was interest in the information (held down by pebbles), coins in the collection box and an adult coming up to tell us (and everyone waiting) how much supported housing had done for her – what better promotion could we have had!
The event was co-ordinated by Brighton Road Baptist Church and the local Scouts with various community groups running different activities. These included a mobile skate park, soft archery, walking football for the over 40s, giant inflatables. Tom, the ace DJ, gave all the community groups plenty of airtime, played our wire-loop game….and ended the whole event with the YMCA Village People song!
