Holiday Activity & Food - Easter 2021

The Starting Well Partnership, Sports Development team and the Community Safety team were successful through Bromsgrove District Council in putting a partnership bid together which would support Easter activities across Bromsgrove to support with outside events and food packages and were supported by The Children’s and Young Peoples Providers Group, Bromsgrove.

Morrisons holiday hampers

Due to the success of the Morrisons hampers during February half term, we linked in with them again and provided 1,399 young people in receipt of free school meals with a weekly food package to support these young people with breakfast and lunch for ten days across the Easter holidays, across Bromsgrove and Redditch.  746 of these families resided in Bromsgrove.  We were also able to deliver one food Morrison’s hamper which provided five days of breakfast and lunches to 77 young people benefited in the district.  The majority of these young people where identified through their schools, youth clubs and referrals.

Below is a picture of what the hamper's contained:

Community Picnics

Following on from the success of the picnics across the previous holiday we opened this up for residents across Bromsgrove, targeted at families who were just managing financially. The families were identified through Schools, The Hub Bromsgrove, Starting Well Partnership, BDHT, The Basement Project and New Starts.  The referrals received supported 395 young people benefited in Bromsgrove, which were prepared by Claveliiscakes Ltd, that were delivered across different days in the Easter holiday. For most of the referrals, they received two picnics, one in the first week of the holiday and a further picnic in the second week of the holiday, delivered by our community volunteers and Bromsgrove District Council staff.

In the first week of the Easter holiday each young person who received a picnic was also provided with an Easter egg, and in the second week each family was provided with an activity pack which was provided by the British Library.

Xplorer Orienteering in Sanders Park, Bromsgrove

To support residents to be active with their families over Easter and to build on the success of February half term the Xplorer Orienteering course was established again in Sanders Park (Bromsgrove) in partnership with British Orienteering. Families could access the Xplorer map online and challenged families to find all the markers dotted around the parks. Following feedback from residents at half term both these courses were made more difficult for the Easter break.

Blackwell Court Adventure Centre Activity Days

50 young people from Bromsgrove and Redditch attended the activity centre over four days. The young people attended the days in the COVID bubbles which had already been formed from them attending their respective youth clubs. The young people who are currently accessing these centres have several emotional and social challenges and engaging in activities during their days at the centre was really pushing the young people out of their comfort zone and had a positive impact on their mental health.

While attending the centre, the young people took part in the following activities:

• Zip Wire
• Fan Descender
• Climbing Wall
• Archery

Blackwell Court Adventure Centre Orienteering Day

To link in with the Orienteering activities and the Easter egg hunts that we were co-ordinating across the two districts, we also held a family orienteering day on the 7^th April at Blackwell Court Adventure Centre, the orienteering also linked in with the children being able to do a Easter egg hunt on the way round.

To encourage the physical sport aspect of our Easter delivery we were also successful in getting the following sports clubs to attend, who hosted taster sessions for the families on the different sports.

• Redditch Hockey Club
• Redditch United

These additional activities offered something extra for the families who attended, and we received some really positive feedback from those who gave the taster sessions a go.

Easter Egg Hunts

We were lucky that with cash donations from local Councillors and community members, as well as donations of Easter eggs from Community Members, Impression Communication, Tesco and Morrisons, we had 3000 Easter Eggs that could be given out to the local communities across Bromsgrove and Redditch.

Each Easter egg hunt was given a Golden Ticket to hide in one of the eggs, that a member of the community could find, this Golden Ticket allowed them to win a £15 love to shop voucher, these vouchers were purchased with the cash donations that we received.

With the distribution of the Easter eggs we linked in with community groups, local Councillors, BDHT and the libraries, youth providers, and church groups, we had Easter egg hunts within the local ward areas.

Through the donations we were also able to support some of the local pre schools with Easter egg hunts, as well as making donations to the food banks across both districts.

We would like to thank all of our amazing volunteers, local community members, council staff and Ready Steady Worcestershire for the help we received over the Easter Half Term across Bromsgrove and Redditch