Personal development
YourResidential
YourResidential is a great way of developing a young person’s confidence self-belief, independence and social skills, to prevent them getting into a life of crime and its associated peer pressures, whilst having fun in a safe and enjoyable environment.
The beauty of the programme is that you take the Young People out of their normal environment and enable them to do activities they have never experienced before or perhaps only on a few occasions, such as high ropes, kayaking, raft building, swimming, archery and rock climbing. We also run trust and leadership games, as a way of encouraging the young people to have new insights into themselves and their abilities.
They also get to experience the beautiful coast and walks in the countryside and see with their own eyes what cows, sheep and horses look like, as some of these young people have never experienced this in their lives. For some YourResidential is the first time out of their borough let alone London.
"This really was a once in a life time opportunity. All the activities we took part in over our weekend-stay at Arethusa (kayaking, raft building, high ropes and archery), I’ve only seen them on television. To take part in all of them over two days is amazing. I’m very thankful for the funding of this project and the YourStory staff for supplying me with this great experience and memories. Arsenal home shirt - £40. Arsenal towel – £10. A trip to Arethusa with YourStory Crew for the weekend – PRICELESS!!!!"
Paul Junior Taylor
My weekend was very enjoyable, fun and a good experience.
I enjoyed my stay at Arethusa it was very warm and welcome. I had a whole room to myself and had two nights of peaceful sleep. Slept like a baby, kept the room nice and tidy.
The activities; I am going to start with Swimming. It was fun and I can swim a bit but not that well nearly drowned in the deep end about 5 times but I was alright, I survived, I just need to swim more often enough.
Next activity was Kayaking, that is a serious sport I really enjoyed that a lot. We had to switch Kayaks with each other, learnt how to turn in different directions and throwing each other out of the Kayaks. Then after that it was time for Raft Building.
I was looking forward to sinking the other team's raft as ours looked like a winner! It looked like a thunder bird rocket but it was failing in the water, Darren and Mark was destroying the opposition's raft.
Andy Mac was the main man behind their winning raft as he was kicking all the way behind their raft, we all ended up in the water it was a laugh and I had fun but I wanted to win.
Next was the High Ropes it was good, I was dreading it at first but when the going got tough I got through it in the end.
Solomon Wallace