Young people around Andover are still being offered emotional and practical support during this lockdown period.
With help from the National Lottery and a recent grant from Waitrose, the Love Andover #LoveBus project works with Andover’s Yellow Brick Road Project and has assisted over 40 young people in the past two weeks alone.
The growing number of projects help young people with emotional and practical support over ‘Lockdown Part Two’.
Providing informal and social education for young people – those under 25 – in Andover, the #LoveBus projects address the individual needs of young people who may be finding life at home, life at school or life generally difficult to handle.
“Some people are unable to talk about the issues they face to parents or teachers”, says Love Andover Community Manager Ella Palmer. “We uncover and help solve those concerns.
“We are out twice a week providing a series of ‘detached’ youth projects. These are projects that informally provide help, support and signposting for young people in their natural environment.
“This means we can provide support away from a forced environment such as home or school that many young people deliberately try and avoid.
“Young people are not communicated or engaged with particularly well about this coronavirus pandemic, so we talk, assist and guide people with concerns – on their level.”
The #LoveBus project team have been nominated for a national award this week for their work. Their work over the past 9 months was also instrumental in last night’s anti-bullying award from the Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation.
The team is out every Monday and Wednesday evening, most recently in the town centre and Roman Way areas of Andover.
In line with government Covid guidelines, the team of trained youth workers are still able to meet young people and are working closely with the National Youth Agency to help young people believe in themselves, give support and provide training and job opportunities.
Organisations that might benefit from collaborative work to support their younger members are asked to email ella@loveandover.com.
