A group of young people who turned to The Prince’s Trust for help have given The Autism and Asperger’s Society new home a much-needed facelift.
Fourteen young people picked up their paint pots and paint brushes and carried out a makeover to give the centre a fresh new look.
The project, which was selected by the students, is part of the 12-week Prince’s Trust self-development course and aims to build young people’s confidence, motivation and life skills.
A spokesperson for the Society said “Congratulations to Team 86 of the Princes’ Trust Team Programme at St Helens College for completing your community project”
“We are amazed by the final result, we cannot thank you enough for choosing us, and for all the cleaning, painting, organising, and work over the past 3 weeks”
“Also, thank you to everyone who joined us, including the Mayor and Mayoress of St Helens, at the hub to celebrate the hard work that has been put into redecorating the building for the Autism & Asperger Society.”
In Their Own Words
Here is what the group of young people said about the experience so far.
“As part of our Prince’s Trust course, we have to complete a project to help the community and help us develop ourselves”
“The project is set during weeks 3,4,5 and 6 of the course and the job is picked, planned, organised and then completed by the team with guidance from course leaders Jade and Keith.”
“In week 3 of the course, we started to look for different places in the community that we could help by researching areas and facilities on the internet.”
“We then made a phone script and used this to start making phone calls to different places we had researched. We arranged three visits to different sites and went to see them.”
“After visiting these, we then came back to college and talked about each one in detail. After a lot of debating, we decided to take a vote and as you are aware, the Autism and Aspergers Society was the one we chose.”
“We started to plan the job and what we were going to do. We had agreed to revamp three rooms in the building and these were the office, games room and hall.”
“We planned to have a different leader for each day, giving everybody a chance to see how people work as the boss and how we all handled it very differently.”
“This was a good experience for everyone to have and taught us a lot about each other and about a realistic working environment.”
“Work we completed over the 2 weeks included; cleared rooms in the chosen areas, prepared for sanding and painting, sanded down wood work, filled in cracks and holes, cleaned, ,painted the ceilings in the hall and games room, painted walls in room with new pastel colours so the service users were happier with the environment.”
“We then glossed all the woodwork and architrave in the hall and games room. The last job we have done was bought wood and made shelves for the new arts and crafts room.”
“In order for us to pay for all this work, we held a bag pack in week 3. We spent the day at Marks and Spencer packing bags and telling people about what we were planning to spend the money on.”
“We raised £593.77, which we have then used on the job and managed to finish it on time and to a standard that we are proud of. It has been hard work and we have worked through dust, cramped conditions and a sickly 2 weeks to get the job done.”
“We have had help from Chris Wilcocks an previous team member with the painting and also Trever from the centre who helped us with the shelving and supply of ladders.”
“We are proud of the work we have completed and feel that we have faced challenges, become more vocal with each other and learnt to work better together.”
“We would like to thank the staff at the centre for giving us the opportunity to complete our project with them and thank you for the refreshments they have provided us with.”
“Thank you to the Mayor and Mayoress of St Helens for attending today and thank you to all the other guests for giving up your time to come and share our achievement.”
Jade Cotter, Prince’s Trust Team Leader said “This was a fantastic community project, they’ve done a great job”
“They have transformed the rooms from a dull and dreary place to be, into a nice environemnt for the service users.”
Centre Info
The Centre at 34 Hall Street, WA10 1DL is open on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10am to 2pm.
To contact the society, call 01744 362260 or visit www.theautismark.org
https://www.facebook.com/AutismAspergerSociety/
If you know someone who might benefit from the Prince’s Trust Team Programme, you can find out more about it here
Other Useful Links
Enterprise programme from Princes Trust helps young people start a Business. more info here
Cash awards for 14-25 year-olds, help get back into work, education, training. more info here
Money available to help young people with education or into work. more info here
