Category: Martha Hilton

Week 4 at RECLAIM

It is my last day at RECLAIM! I have had a great four weeks here. As the charity is so small everyone is really close and have made me feel very welcome. I will be sad to leave!

During my last week I have conducted two interviews with two 14 year olds from the Moss Side and Gorton projects. They were very thoughtful and helpful and glad to be involved in my work. I have used this information as a case study for my evaluation for RECLAIM. I have finished writing up my report, hopefully this will highlight the good work RECLAIM is doing with young people and also identify ways in which the projects can be improved.

Week 3 at RECLAIM

Since my last blog there has been quite a few events at RECLAIM. Firstly I conducted one of my focus groups with some girls from the Gorton project last year. The group was of about 5 or 6 girls who were very willing to express their opinion and give us some useful information. I arranged for the group to take place at the Gorton Monastery; a beautiful building that has recently been restored in the slightly disadvantaged area of Manchester. The girls had been there before and had an existing relationship with the director, Elaine. Elaine took time to speak to the girls about an exciting re development opportunity at the monastery and an old run down community center down the road.

Week 2 at RECLAIM

It is the start of the summer programme at RECLAIM and there are some exciting trips organised for all the young people. Yesterday we went bowling and I took the opportunity to talk to some of them about their experience on RECLAIM to gather some information for my evaluation. Most of them were intelligent and engaging and were keen to give me some useful information but as you can imagine it is sometimes difficult to get 14 year olds to fill out a boring questionnaire or something similar! However I did get some interesting points and put them together in the first part of my evaluation and we had a fun afternoon bowling!

Week 1 at RECLAIM

My Charity Insights is at RECLAIM, a relatively new charity based in Manchester. RECLAIM works with young people who have been recognised as talented but may need some support to realise their potential. It encourages communication between young people and adults in communities in Greater Manchester in order to build the confidence and voices of the young people involved. One of RECLAIM’s main tag lines is enabling young people to be heard, be seen and lead change in their communities.

My project is based on research, outreach and evaluation.  I will be running focus groups with some of the previous participants in order to evaluate their projects and give some feedback so changes can be made to the upcoming projects.